semitism.net

This post comes to Semitism.net from Assaf Oron, an Israeli military refuser living in Seattle, where he is also a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington. This is an expanded version of an op-ed printed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which was itself a translation from a Hebrew essay he posted on an Israeli news portal.

Israeli dissenters have been increasingly angry at the American Jewish leadership. Mainstream Jewish organizations ensure blanket US support to Israeli government policies, creating a culture of impunity that has repeatedly gotten that country into trouble. For me, the last straw was an invitation from all major Jewish organizations – headed by Seattle’s Jewish Federation - to join a ‘support Israel’ rally, just as Israel’s IDF was pounding Lebanon and Gaza. I did not go to the rally, but I did visit the Federation’s website: it was split between calls to assist Israelis displaced due to Hizbullah rockets, and descriptions of the rally. I could not find a single word about Lebanese civilian deaths, which at that point outnumbered Israeli civilian deaths by a 20:1 ratio. I sent an angry letter to the local Jewish paper.

The next day, Naveed Haq (angry about Lebanon and possibly deranged) broke into the Federation building, killed Pamela Waechter and wounded five more employees. Can Haq’s defense argue thus: “Since the Federation is effectively complicit in the killing of Lebanese civilians, its employees are culpable and killing them is legitimate”? Heavens, no! The Federation employees are defenseless civilians. You cannot kill them as proxy targets to anyone. Moreover, it is wrong to reduce the Federation’s complex ties with Israel – cultural, historical, religious – to a single political act. The Seattle attack is a reprehensible crime. No one in his or her right mind would argue differently.

So why is it that the Israeli mainstream and many Americans condone the collective punishment-by-proxy of Palestinian civilians? Since January the Israeli government has punished Palestinians for voting Hamas into power. Israelis have good reasons to be angry about this electoral outcome; but reducing it to ‘a Palestinian nation turned into Hamastan’, as has become the mainstream Israeli-American interpretation, is overly simplistic and plain wrong. Above all, Israelis conveniently ignore the limited practical meaning of any Palestinian election – given that Israel controls virtually all aspects of Palestinian life.

Israel’s government, however, knows this full well, and proceeded to punish Palestinians for their ‘nerve’ - by denying them money which is theirs, and a host of other measures that worsened the economic situation of the impoverished Palestinians, pushing them further towards social chaos and humanitarian disaster. This – together with a decision to use the IDF more aggressively in Gaza – triggered a cycle of mutual escalation which killed dozens of civilians (mostly Palestinians) and culminated in Hamas ending its year-long ceasefire and kidnapping an Israeli soldier on June 25. Then, the IDF immediately destroyed Gaza’s only power plant, demolished major bridges, and completely sealed Gaza off from the world, stranding thousands of Palestinians on the Egyptian border in the scorching heat. Eight civilians died while waiting to return, including a dehydrated baby.

In Lebanon we see more of the same. After the Hizbullah raid that reignited the front, IDF’s chief of staff vowed to turn Lebanon “20 years back” – in reference to the total destruction from civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion. His words became reality, with the IDF bombing infrastructure across the land; for example, Beirut International Airport. According to Israel, the Lebanese deserve this for their leadership’s failure to rein in Hizbullah.

Morally speaking, there is no difference between the death of Gaza civilians due to direct or indirect Israeli actions, the killing of 8 Israeli Railways employees by a Hizbullah rocket that hit their Haifa depot, the killing of hundreds of Lebanese civilians by IDF airstrikes, and Pamela Waechter’s murder. All are murders of defenseless civilians, explained as political punishment-by-proxy.

In the past, ‘pro-Israel’ apologists have claimed a moral higher ground, arguing that Israel does not target civilians and its enemies do. While this claim’s veracity often seemed questionable to unprejudiced observers, in summer 2006 it has become patently absurd. We now witness a surreal, Orwellian spectacle: the main armed protagonists are engaged mostly in hurting each other’s civilian support bases. These civilian populations themselves unwittingly cheer on their ‘heroes’ to deal yet another blow to the other side – all but guaranteeing that they will be attacked again.

We must sound a clear moral voice. No use of force (including collective punishment) should be tolerated except immediate, narrowly-defined self-defense. Violators – whether individuals, militia or nations – must be stopped and brought to justice. If we fail to uphold the sanctity of life everywhere regardless of nationality, we risk seeing the whole planet drenched in blood soon.