Clueless in Gaza
Since we were already arguing about the Middle East, I thought I'd devote a special section of this week's posting to the Gaza outbreak, still under way as I write. Here it is. Even though all the usual suspects, the Judophobes, the diplomats, the gullible liberals, say that what Israel is doing now in Gaza is wrong, it really is wrong.
My position, as a strong supporter of Israel in general, is that Israel's action is wrong morally and gravely mistaken politically. Attacks from the air always kill innocents. It is no good pleading that you regret such deaths, when you knew perfectly well that your actions were bound to cause them. This was equally true of our own adventures in Iraq and Serbia, and is true of American bombing in Afghanistan. Israel's moral position is seriously weakened by the deaths of these innocents, and also by the flanneling and evasion of its spokesmen over this.
And just because the usual anti-Israel voices squeak that the action is 'disproportionate' ( as squeak they will, since for them Israel can never do anything right) Israel and its uncritical defenders should not assume that the word is out of place. The rocketing of Israeli civilians by Hamas is a repellent form of terrorist murder. But the bombing of Gaza by F-16s, subjecting huge numbers of civilians to the maddening terror of aerial attack, not to mention the tragedies concealed within the phrase 'collateral damage' is what exactly? Yes, you can argue that the Hamas rockets are specifically intended to kill innocent people, as they are, whereas the F-16s are targeting Hamas militants. But, see above, even the smartest bomb cannot choose exactly who will be in range of its blast, shrapnel and heat. Those who ordered the bombing knew for certain that women and children, and other non-combatants, would die and be maimed. The difference between the two actions is nothing like as great as Israel would like to believe. 
Also, what is the point of this brainless flailing? Does anyone in Jerusalem really imagine that, if a few hundred Hamas militants are killed, there will be no replacements for them? Does anyone really think that anything short of a re-occupation of parts of Gaza (at enormous human and political cost, and probably unsustainable in the long-term) will stop the rockets? My guess is that rockets will still be landing on Sderot six months from now, and that Israel's political and moral position will by then be significantly weaker than it was before it launched this unwise assault. The action is as dim and misconceived as the blundering attack on Southern Lebanon under the same leadership. Both have no clear, achievable purpose. Both are propaganda gifts to the enemies of Israel, who are immensely skilled at portraying this tiny, endangered country as a giant aggressor, and who have had endless help in doing so from the stupider parts of the Israeli establishment. Both will end by demoralising the Israeli armed forces and people.
My suspicion is that these actions are entirely driven by Israeli internal politics, by the general inadequacy of the current political leadership there, and also by an underlying despair - the kind of dismal dead end which sometimes drives otherwise intelligent people into doomed adventures. Demography, the rising power of anti-Israel Russia, the increasingly pro-Arab stance of the EU, the likelihood that the USA will once again demand that Israel takes the Neville Chamberlain route to unsustainable ' land for peace' deals, the quiet emigration of many of Israel's brightest and best, the alarming success of Iran's sponsorship of Hizbollah and Hamas ( a far more genuine threat to Israel than Iran's fumbling progress towards a nuclear weapon) must have an influence. But these facts merely explain the buffoonery of the Gaza attack. They don't excuse it.
Now to my responses to the arguments on the general issue of Israel. Mr Steadman, has submitted several lengthy contributions. In none of them has he moved one inch beyond his original starting point, or dealt properly with my position.
He repeatedly produces long indictments of Israeli misdeeds. Why? I have acknowledged from the start that Israel has done many wrong things. It is as if a defendant had pleaded guilty, and the prosecution still insisted on calling witnesses and mounting a full case against him.
Mr Steadman has missed my point. I could equally well pelt him with perfectly truthful accounts of Arab misdeeds, trading massacre for massacre. Why bother? the issue will not be resolved by this sort of thing. And in my view, those who resort to this sort of argument do not wish to resolve it. I have asked him and his allies, who can with ease produce many Israeli and Jewish critics of Israel, to produce any Arab critics of Arab actions. But they don't respond ( because such critics are rare, lack influence and often live in fear). The point of this question ( which once again they seem to miss) is not to flaunt the superiority of Israel's free, law-governed society over lawless Arab despotisms (though this is worth considering). It is to point out (see below) that the conditions don't exist for the development of an Arab faction which favours a compromise. A compromise by its nature requires the reluctant but unflinching acceptance of painful concessions. How can such a concept gain support in a society without open dissent? What leader, in a despotism, would risk it?
Let me, once more,. briefly sum up my position, refined to deal with the questions raised by contributors.
1.Israel exists. Its foundation is questionable, and may not have been wise. It has mistreated minorities before, during and after its foundation. But it is not unique in this. The same could be said of many modern nations - including the USA ( a society based upon the dispossession of the North American Indians, and upon the violent annexation of formerly Mexican territory); Australia (dispossession of the Aboriginal peoples, and in places (notably Tasmania) their extermination) ; New Zealand (dispossession of the Maori peoples) , Poland ( based on the violent mass-expulsions of ethnic Germans) Russia (ditto, not to mention its own internal persecutions of Chechens, Crimean Tatars and others) The Czech Republic (ditto), India ( based upon violent mass expulsions of Muslims ) Pakistan (based upon violent mass expulsions of Hindus and Sikhs), many Arab countries (borders drawn by the British Empire for colonial purposes, but retained for convenience, Jewish and latterly Christian populations driven out, and where not driven out, subject to second-class or third-class status). If we go back a few centuries,. there is hardly a country on the planet that cannot be found guilty of some sort of 'ethnic cleansing' or aggressive annexation. Are we all to sulk bitterly over these events forever? Or does a point come where we try to make the best of things? Which attitude is better for human civilisation? I remain interested as to why Israel alone of these nations is singled out for unremitting condemnation, and why the refugees from 1948, alone of all refugees in the world, have not been resettled by and among their brothers and sisters. And I note that these specific questions are never specifically answered by those who favour the Arab cause. What is it that they do not wish to acknowledge? I accept that in many cases it is ignorance, in some the self-righteous passion of the young and ill-educated, who just know they are right and are beyond reason, but what of those who cannot use these excuses?
2. If Israel exists, then all involved in the argument have to accept that its continuing existence, as a sovereign and specifically Jewish state controlling its own borders, must be part of any settlement. To refuse to do so would be, implicitly, to favour and argue for the very sorts of dispossession and ethnic cleansing which my pro-Arab critics claim to disapprove of so strongly. Are these critics actually prepared to make unequivocal declarations of support for the continued existence of Israel as a sovereign and specifically Jewish state controlling its own borders?
3. Next is the issue of compromise, and the spirit of compromise in the Arab world. My pro-Arab critics maintain that the Arab world has always been ready to compromise over the existence of a Jewish national home or state in the Middle East, while belittling any Israeli willingness to do so. I would respond that I am quite sure many individual Arabs, kindly, hospitable and sensible people, have always been ready for compromise. But their leaders, with a few minor exceptions, have not. Their attitude from the start has been 'all or nothing', and when not offered all, they have conceded nothing.
Thus the rejection of the Peel Commission of 1937, and the UN plan of 1947. We are told now that the Arab world would accept a return to the borders which existed before 1967. But what is the basis for this in reason? The 1967 borders were never accepted while they existed. They were the result of the 1947 war, whose aim was to destroy Israel totally. the land thus lost to the Arabs was lost because they were defeated in a war of aggression. It is rare indeed for a defeated aggressor to be offered the spoils he failed to win through his aggression, in any subsequent peace. I should have thought the reasons for this were self-evident.
These critics also bizarrely justify the Arab attacks on Israel at its foundation, on the basis of Israel's wrongdoing during the subsequent war. Thus the Arabs were entitled to attack because of what Israel had not yet done, and which nobody knew it was going to do, after that attack? They do not (wisely) consider what the Arab states would undoubtedly have done with the Jewish inhabitants of the newly-founded Israel, if the 1948 war had gone the other way. Are we supposed to believe that they would have been left where they were, as free and equal citizens of whatever state resulted? Their behaviour, after defeat, towards their own defenceless Jewish minorities does not suggest otherwise. Once again. my pro-Arab critics are significantly unwilling to condemn, without reservation, this atrocious piece of persecution. I don't think any of them has yet responded to my invitation to them to say something about the massacre at Hama in 1982, when Syria's President Assad first had his air force bomb this city, then ordered his artillery to open fire on it, to suppress a revolt (including terrorist attacks) by the Muslim Brotherhood. Estimates of the dead vary between 7,000 and 35,000, many of them without doubt innocent civilians. This is far worse than anything that has ever happened in Gaza. I have seen no outrage over this among those who get heated over the wrongdoings of Israel Why not? Is killing Arabs only bad when the Israelis do it? Is it all right for Arabs to kill Arabs? Yet I am quite prepared to condemn Israeli and Zionist barbarity, as I think I have repeatedly proved. My politics do not prevent me from calling murder by its right name. Yet the pro-Arabists seem to have a difficulty with criticising the Arab states. Why is this? What is the importance of it?
The importance of it lies in the nature of the compromise proposed. This invariably takes the form of a permanent and irrevocable hand-over of territory by Israel, in return for a piece of paper signed by some Arab leaders.
Now, this is not actually the form of a normal peace treaty between equals settling a dispute. Such treaties tend to involve mutual hand-overs. Territory passes in both directions.
Nor is it like peace treaties where two belligerents have fought each other to a standstill, and agree to stop fighting and perhaps to hand back captured territory.
No, the only sort of agreement it resembles is that of the forced hand-over by a party either too weak to fight or defeated in war ( see either Munich 1938 or the Franco German Armistice of 1940).
What's more, as has been pointed out here, Israel has very little territory. Her enemies have a great deal. Those who have not visited the region perhaps have an absurdly exaggerated idea of Israel's size, because it is so often in the news. I do commend them to get hold of a decent atlas and see just how very small Israel is. It is tiny. ( a tank can cross it, at its narrowest point, in 18 minutes).
So what is the logic of making an equal peace dependent on hand-over of territory? Shouldn't it be the other way about? Shouldn't the first step be a perceptible, permanent change in attitude and mood in the Arab countries, which have till now always behaved as if Israel had no right to exist, and as if peace agreements ( largely imposed by the USA ) are to be obeyed to the letter, more or less, but not in spirit?
During the wild euphoria which followed the Oslo meetings and the agreements which followed ( a euphoria which I thought at the time was absurd), there was excited talk of a 'New Middle East', in which Israel would have wholly normal relations with its neighbours, as happened. Frontiers in the Middle East would become like those in Europe.
Symbolising this were a small number new 'normal' border crossings between (pre-1967) Israel and Jordan, reputedly the Arab country most peaceably-inclined and most friendly towards Israel. One of them is in the north, and a few years ago (in 2002, I think)I was on my way to Jordan and thought I would try it.
It took some time to find the infrequent, barely publicised bus service which used this route. It wasn't really a bus, more a large car in which I and four fellow-passengers, all Jordanians with relatives in Israel proper or the West Bank, set out for the frontier near Beit She'an. We eventually arrived at a wholly empty Israeli border terminal, where the Israeli border guards were highly suspicious about my entirely innocent travel plans (they had plenty of time to be, in the absence of anything much else to do) . Eventually I and my companions took an otherwise empty bus across to the Jordanian frontier post, where after brief formalities I took an otherwise empty bus to Irbid and on to Amman. Nobody was going the other way. There was one private car crossing at the same time, and its driver carefully removed his Israeli plates and replaced them with Jordanian ones. My travelling companions said it would have been unsafe for him to drive through Jordan with Israeli plates. At the time there was an 'Anti-Normalisation Committee', which fought all signs of normality between Jordan and Israel. This has since, I believe, been suppressed by the Amman authorities, but I suspect the Jordanian people, long subjected to a diet of anti-Israeli propaganda, are very cool towards peace with Israel.
Similarly, when I once flew from Israel to Egypt, the El Al plane was conducted to a very obscure part of the Cairo airport after it landed, and the sparse passengers faced a long, long bus-ride to the terminal. I received the strong impression that the Egyptian authorities were unhappy about having an Israeli plane in their airport.
I believe this coolness ( and there are many other examples of the 'Cold Peace' between Egypt and Israel) is a by-product of Arab repression, and a strange side-effect of it. Arab journalists, broadcasters, academics and politicians all know that there is much wrong with their societies. A few very courageously make pubic criticisms of their own rulers and usually end up in prison for their pains. The repressive machine in Egypt, which I have witnessed myself putting down a peaceful demonstration against the Iraq war, is terrifyingly efficient and quite ruthless.
But all are free to criticise Israel, which therefore provides a perfect outlet for the natural desire of such people to criticise something, as well as a safety-valve for people denied the right to complain about anything else.
I commend the interesting output of the organisation MEMRI, which translates the Arab media. MEMRI undoubtedly has a pro-Israel agenda, and some its translations have been disputed (I should point out here that Arabic is an extremely subtle language, often open to more than one interpretation when being rendered into English). But it is undeniable that MEMRI has provided unambiguous evidence of Judophobic hate material in much of the Arab media - material which if published in any Western outlet would bring down storms of condemnation on the authors' heads. Since this media is largely state-controlled and censored, Arab governments can hardly claim they know nothing about it. And we all know about the Holocaust-denying and related remarks of Iran's President Ahmadinejad.
Until this sort of thing stops, until the Arab world comes to the recognition that Israel is here to stay and should be free to exist as do other nations, any peace treaty will be temporary and largely worthless. In which case, why should Israel be expected to give up territory ( which is permanent, and valuable) in return for it. My belief is that an Arab ( and Iranian) change of mind is possible, but only if the major powers, especially the USA, Russia and China, abandon the path of 'land for peace', and concentrate on persuading the Iranian and Arab governments, and the Arabs of the area, to abandon their irredentist and intolerant attitudes. If this doesn't work, there's no hope at all. Does anybody really think the current 'peace process', or the 'two-state solution' are working? Everything is far worse than before they were proposed. And, Mr Steadman please note, how does yet another recitation of Israel's bad deeds help anything? Can't the supporters of the Arab cause do better than this?
