Who is Killing the Children?

A couple of weeks ago I happened to watch a special about the latest Israel/Gaza war on Democracy Now . The segment featured Nome Chomsky an MIT history and linguistics professor known for his progressive views and a non-xenophobic take on US history (his history book was banned from some Southern public schools) In the discussion he mentioned a Bob Shafer piece on CBS where he opined on the conflict. The host, Am y Goodman, showed the clip in which Bob Shafer denounced Hamas for causing the deaths of so many Palestinian children. During his presentation Shafer showed an old clip of Golda Meyer saying that “she can forgive Palestinians for killing Israeli children but she cannot forgive them for making Israel kill theirs”. (may not be the exact words). Nome Chomsky then accused Shafer of reciting Israeli propaganda as he claimed was typical of most US media. My reaction upon hearing Golda Meyer’s comment was: a nice catchy phrase but what a ridicules statement. No one can make a country do heinous things. Israel chose to use a method of war which results in heavy “collateral” damage to minimize the loss of its own soldiers (to date the ratio of casualties are over 2,000, mostly civilians versus 67 of whom there were only three civilians). Assume for the moment Israel has a legitimate reason for attacking Gaza. It claimed that its mission was to destroy tunnels used by Hamas to infiltrate Israel and carry out terrorist acts. There are many tactics Israel could have employed to this end. It could send in ground troops without the bombardment. After all, Israel has great military superiority in manpower, weapons, intelligence and training without including its air-power. This tactic, however, would result in greater Israeli casualties but on the other hand not inflict as much damage on the civilian population. (Years ago I saw a piece early on in the last war with Iraq which showed a tank bombarding a tenement building from which a sniper was firing. The commentator mentioned a protest by the British forces also fighting in the area about the disproportionate use of force. They said that in this situation, instead of killing numerous civilians who after all we were there to liberate, the Brits would have sent in a squad of soldiers to flush out the sniper. Granted, the guy in the tank was much safer than the soldiers in the building. The use of the tank was a choice.) Another tactic could be to destroy the tunnels from the Israeli side. After all, a tunnel has two openings. Instead of softening up the are around the entrance to the tunnel with air and artillery bombardment then sending in troops to destroy it, why not destroy the tunnel from the exit side. Israel CHOSE the tactic which results in the greatest number of civilian casualties. To be fair, Gaza also makes a choice on where to place the rockets. The issue is that there is little value placed on Palestinian lives and great value on Israeli. In this conflict the current ratio of total number of Palestinians killed to Israelis is about 30 to 1 and civilians about 500 to 1. When an Israeli soldier is captured in the course of battle it is deemed a “kidnapping” and there is much made of it in our press. However, The capture of hundreds of Palestinians is called an “arrest” and there is not much said about it. (It seems like the ratio needs to be on the order of thousands to one to be noteworthy.) A third way, though strategic and not tactical is to end the war. A blockade, by international law is considered an act of war. As long as Gaza is under siege, it is at war with Israel. One could argue that the rockets fired by Gaza are not a terrorist act as claimed by the Israelis and US media, but a military act of one combatant against another. If the blockade’s intention is to keep rockets out of the hands of the Palestinians, it obviously has not worked. Lifting the blockade would end an act of war and if the rockets continue, it then, though of questionable effectiveness, may be called an act of terror. Well, in any case, Mrs. Meyer and Mr. Shafer, Israel is not forced to kill children. It makes a conscious choice to do so.