[Peace-discuss] Israel’s Supporters: Where Do You Draw the Line Between Defense and Atrocities?

Sat Aug 23 09:25:15 EDT 2014

  Israel’s Supporters: Where Do You Draw the Line Between Defense and
  Atrocities?

Israel Four children were killed while playing football in the Gaza 
Strip Soure AP
Educate! <http://www.popularresistance.org/category/educate/> Gaza 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/gaza/>, Israel 
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By Fred Branfman, www.alternet.org 
<http://www.alternet.org/world/open-letter-israels-supporters-where-do-you-draw-line-between-defense-and-atrocities?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark>
August 22nd, 2014
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/August 19, 2014 /  |  Dear U.S. supporters of Israel in Gaza:

If you believed the IDF could destroy Hamas by employing portable gas 
chambers or chemical weapons to publicly gas over 1,400 Gazan civilians, 
including 400 children, chosen at random, would you favor doing so? I 
guess not. Perhaps you even feel insulted at the suggestion that you 
might. But this raises a basic question: if you would not favor gassing 
Palestinan civilians, how do you justify your support for blowing them 
to bits?

The controversial issue is not Israel trying to destroy Hamas tunnels. 
Nor is it the attempt to destroy rockets, as if the Israelis can claim 
that they reasonably suspected the 46-48,000 U.N.-estimated buildings 
they either partially or totally destroyed contained rockets. Nor is it 
rightfully condemning Hamas for rocketing civilian targets as well. As 
even long-term apologists for Israeli violence like the New Republic’s 
Leon Wieseltier acknowledge 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/middleeast/israel-supporters-try-to-come-to-terms-with-killing-of-children-in-gaza-strip.html>, 
the issue is massive Israeli bombing and shelling of the civilian 
infrastructure in Gaza, which is wholly disproportionate to combatting 
tunnels and/or rockets.

This raises the basic question: as a human being, where do you draw the 
line? How do you justify your support for mass misery inflicted on 
hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians? The bombing and shelling 
campaign, whatever its stated intent, has not only murdered 1,400 
civilians and maimed thousands more, but destroyed hospitals, schools, 
businesses, and Gaza’s only power station, plunging 1.8 million Gazans 
into darkness and depriving them even of drinking water, created over 
400,000 refugees, and traumatized a U.N.-estimated 373,000 children. 
Your own integrity requires that you at least acknowledge the facts 
rather than, as so many of Israel’s supporters do, accept at face-value 
Israeli claims that it sought to avoid civilian destruction.

I answered such questions for myself 45 years ago, when I discovered 
that civilians were well over 90% of the victims of U.S. leaders’ mass 
bombing of northern Laos. I concluded then that there is never any moral 
or legal justification for mass bombing or shelling of civilians. Period.

The World Can’t Wait website has just posted a PowerPoint presentation 
on the years-long bombing of northern Laos, 
<http://warcriminalswatch.org/images/stories/pdfs/LAOS-B%7E2.pdf> 
perhaps the worst unknown crime of the 20th century. It combines an 
analysis of automated war, the writings of the rice farmers who suffered 
most and were heard from least, and my personal story in discovering  
and trying to expose it to the world. A Lao mother summed up the nature 
of mass bombing of civilians for all time: “There was danger as the 
sound of airplanes led me to be terribly, terribly afraid of dying. When 
looking at the faces of my children who were losing the so very precious 
happiness of childhood I would grow increasingly miserable. In reality, 
whatever happens, it is the innocent who suffer.”

The question of protecting civilians in wartime far transcends the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: it is a basic measurement of the progress 
of human civilization. Not only Israel’s humanity, but yours is at stake 
in your support for Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza.

There are two basic questions regarding warfare: 1) whether a given war 
is considered legitimate, e.g. whether it is “aggressive war”; and 2) 
how civilians are treated once a war is launched. These are two distinct 
questions—even if you consider a given war legitimate there is no moral 
or legal justification for waging it in a way that mainly murders and 
maims civilians.

The evolution of international law on this question,  beginning with the 
1907 Hague Convention, has been slow and painful. But it is today 
unequivocal: waging war in a way that results primarily in civilian 
deaths and damage is a punishable war crime. Article 85 of the 1949 
Geneva Conventions states categorically that “the following acts shall 
be regarded as grave breaches of this Protocol… launching an 
indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian 
objects in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of 
life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.”

That is a precise description of Israeli bombing and shelling in Gaza.

Israel claims it is justified in maiming and murdering civilians because 
Hamas is using them as “human shields.” But there is always a military 
and political rationale for bombing civilians. In Laos, Deputy CIA 
Director James Lilley explained that though North Vietnamese soldiers 
were not in the villages, they would hide there if the U.S. didn’t bomb 
civilians. Prime Minister Nethanyahu offers a similar rationale for mass 
civilian murder today.

Other rationales include hoping that mass murder of civilians will turn 
the population against their leaders, as when former Israeli General 
Amos Yadlin stated in the N.Y. Times that Israel must bomb partly so 
that “Gaza’s people (are) given the chance to elect new leaders.” As the 
U.S. Senate Refugee Subcommittee concluded after visiting Laos, the 
bombing’s purpose was to hurt the enemy by destroying its /“/social and 
economic infrastructure.” This was also General Curtis Lemay’s basic 
rationale for burning alive over 100,000 Japanese civilians in the 
firebombing of Tokyo on March 9, 1945, an act for which Lemay 
acknowledged at the time, and his assistant Robert McNamara later also 
admitted, was a war crime. (See Note 1 below.)

It is precisely because there is always a rationale for bombing 
civilians that the progress of human civilization is largely measured by 
the extent to which civilians are protected in times of war from 
indiscriminate bombing and shelling, and that those who violate these 
rules are prosecuted for crimes of war. Protecting civilians against 
indiscriminate murder is not only a question of war. It is a measure of 
your own humanity.

*Civilian Impact of Israel’s 2014 Attack on Gaza*

CIVILIAN DEAD AND WOUNDED: A U.N.-estimated 1396 Palestinian civilians 
killed including  222 women and 418 children, thousands more wounded. 
(Source: 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/month-long-war-in-gaza-has-left-a-humanitarian-and-environmental-crisis/2014/08/06/85772138-cad7-4812-90d9-6bdb21be1c63_story.html> 
Information Management Unit in the United Nations Office for the 
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian 
Territories, from “Month-long War in Gaza Has Left a Humanitarian and 
Environmental Crisis,” Washington Post. August 6, 2014)

CHILDREN: “Pernille Ironside, who runs the UNICEF field office in Gaza, 
said the agency estimates that roughly 373,000 Palestinian children have 
had some kind of direct traumatic experience as a result of the attack 
and will require immediate psycho-social support … (She) added that 
she’s seen ‘children coming out of these shelters with scabies, lice, 
all kinds of communicable diseases.’” (Source: 
<http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/08/06/amid-gazas-ruins-impact-children-most-severe-un-official> 
“Amid Gaza’s Ruins, Impact on Children Most ‘Severe’: UN Official”, 
Common Dreams, August 6, 2014)

ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURE: “175 of Gaza’s most successful industrial 
plants had also taken devastating hits, plunging an already despairing 
economy into a deeper abyss” (Source: 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/world/middleeast/after-conflict-gaza-industry-lies-in-ashes.html> 
“Conflict Leaves Industry in Ashes and Gaza Reeling From Economic Toll”, 
NY Times, August 6, 2014)

MOSQUES, FARMING, INDUSTRY: “As many as 80 mosques have been damaged or 
destroyed. Many farming areas and industrial zones, filled with the 
small manufacturing plants and factories that anchored Gaza’s economy, 
are now wastelands.” (Source: 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/month-long-war-in-gaza-has-left-a-humanitarian-and-environmental-crisis/2014/08/06/85772138-cad7-4812-90d9-6bdb21be1c63_story.html> 
“Month-long War in Gaza Has Left a Humanitarian and Environmental 
Crisis,” Washington Post. August 6, 2014)

WATER INFRASTRUCTURE: Oxfam said: “We’re working in an environment with 
a completely destroyed water infrastructure that prevents people in Gaza 
from cooking, flushing toilets or washing [their] hands.” (Source: 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-gazas-survivors-now-face-a-battle-for-water-shelter-and-power-9650347.html> 
“Gaza’s Survivors Now Face A Battle For Water, Shelter And Power,” The 
Independent, August 5, 2014)

400,000 REFUGEES, 46-48,000 HOMES: “Frode Mauring, the UN  Development 
Programme’s special representative said that with 16-18,000 homes 
totally destroyed and another 30,000 partially damaged, and 400,000 
internally displaced people, ‘the current situation for Gaza is 
devastating.’” (Source: 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-gazas-survivors-now-face-a-battle-for-water-shelter-and-power-9650347.html> 
“Gaza’s Survivors Now Face A Battle For Water, Shelter And Power”, The 
Independent, August 5, 2014)

ELECTRICITY: “Mr Mauring said that the bombing of Gaza’s only power 
station and the collapse  at least six of the 10 power lines from 
Israel, had ‘huge development and humanitarian consequences’ (Source: 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-gazas-survivors-now-face-a-battle-for-water-shelter-and-power-9650347.html> 
“Gaza’s Survivors Now Face A Battle For Water, Shelter And Power,” The 
Independent, August 5, 2014)

SCHOOLS, REFUGEE CENTERS: “United Nations officials accused Israel of 
violating international law after artillery shells slammed into a school 
overflowing with evacuees Wednesday … The building was the sixth U.N. 
school in the Gaza Strip to be rocked by explosions during the conflict. 
(Source: 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israel-presses-attack-16-killed-at-un-school/2014/07/30/4a643588-17a5-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html> 
“U.N. Says Israel Violated International Law, After Shells Hit School In 
Gaza”, Washington Post, July 30, 2014)

HOSPITALS: “Israeli forces fired a tank shell at a hospital in Gaza on 
Monday … It was the third hospital Israel’s military has struck since 
launching a ground offensive in Gaza last week.” (Source: 
<http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/another-gaza-hospital-hit-israeli-strike-four-dead-40-hurt-n161086> 
“Another Gaza Hospital Hit by Israeli Strike,” NBC News, July 21, 2014)

HOSPITALS, HEALTH WORKERS: “There has been mounting evidence that the 
Israel Defense Forces launched apparently deliberate attacks against 
hospitals and health professionals in Gaza … Philip Luther, Middle East 
and North Africa Director at Amnesty International (said) ‘the Israeli 
army has targeted health facilities or professionals. Such attacks are 
absolutely prohibited by international law and would amount to war 
crimes.’” (Source: 
<http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/news-item/mounting-evidence-of-deliberate-attacks-on-gaza-health-workers-by-israeli-army> 
“Mounting Evidence Of Deliberate Attacks On Gaza Health Workers By 
Israeli Army,” Amnesty International, August 7, 2014)

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