From Ha’aretz: “Military officials: Use of F-16 was a mistake“
Amid scathing international criticism of the Gaza air strike, Israeli military officials have said that it was a mistaken decision to have dropped a one-ton bomb from an F-16 warplane in order to assassinate the man who headed Israel’s most-wanted list.
Senior officials said Wednesday that had Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer known that innocents were in the vicinity of the attack, they would have put off the assassination of Hamas military chief Saleh Shehadeh.
On Tuesday Sharon termed the killing of Shehadeh and his deputy a ‘great success’, although voicing regret at the deaths of innocents.
But late on Tuesday, the IDF and the Shin Bet security service opened investigations into the failures of the Air Force raid. Army Radio said Wednesday that the investigations would focus on the process that led intelligence officers to conclude that Shehadeh was alone in the building.
This is key: The Israeli intelligence apparatus is one of the world’s best, and so it is not surprising that political decision makers would sign off on a mission recommended in large part by information gatherers. In this particular case, airborn cameras on Israeli surveillance planes didn’t pick up the adjacent tin structures, according to a senior IDF official.
Military sources, however, said the central defect in the operation was the decision to use an F-16 warplane, which dropped a one-ton bomb on the house in which Shehadeh was staying, a structure in the heart of a densely populated residential area.
Only four of those killed were in the house itself. Most of the victims were in neighboring buildings.
In an assessment presented to the political echelon prior to the decision to attack, security authorities said the bomb would have a ‘minor effect’ on nearby buildings.
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman MK Haim Ramon said Wednesday that while Israeli intelligence had failed in informing Sharon and Ben-Eliezer that Shehadeh was alone at the time the operation was launched, ‘The central error was that we used weaponry that anyone involved in the decision making process should have known could harm innocent people living in the area.’
Ramon, a potential political rival to both Sharon and Ben-Eliezer, said that discussion by the wider cabinet could have foreseen the results of the Monday night air strike.
‘I am surprised by the senior political echelon,’ Ramon told Israel Radio. ‘I have no doubt that it knew of the risks of carrying out the operation using a one-ton bomb at the time that it made the decision, and despite this it took the risk.’
The IDF does not simply operate an F-16 jet in the heart of a populated area without the authorization of the political echelon, Ramon continued. ‘To my knowledge, authorization has never been given in the past to carrying out an operation of this type — and certainly not with armaments such as these — in the heart of a population which is not taking part in terrorism.’
Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said that the assassination operation had been put off several times in the past, when intelligence data showed that the operation would put civilians at risk.
‘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.’
This is another important consideration: if indeed Israeli leadership can show that they’ve delayed this mission on several occasions rather than risk civilian casualties (and preliminary reports say that Israel aborted the mission on 4 occasions), then either they grew impatient (in which case, why this time?), or else they miscalculated (in which case, the civilian deaths were accidental).
Leading international criticism of the assassination, U.S. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: ‘This heavy-handed action does not contribute to peace.’ He added that the message had been conveyed to Israel by the American embassy in Tel Aviv.
‘This is not only a moral question,’ Ramon said. ‘It is a substantive question in the struggle against terrorism. Without international support in general and U.S. backing in particular, we don’t have a free hand to act against terrorists and terrorism.’
Dovish Labor MK Yossi Beilin, currently in Washington, said he believed Israeli leaders when they said they would have cancelled the raid rather than harm civilians.
‘But this does not lighten the severity of the act itself. The very fact of carrying out “liquidations” in a democratic country in which there is no death penalty, is very, very questionable, and must be limited to cases in which we are really intervening in a “ticking bomb”. This, regrettably, was not the case here,’ Beilin said.
‘Democratic countries generally do not do things of this nature, and the price we are paying today among the best of our friends is very, very high, and is superfluous.’
President Moshe Katsav said Wednesday of the casualties that ‘it truly pains the heart to see children that were killed and seriously injured. That was not our intention. That is not us. This is not our policy. Mistakes happen, and this was a mistake.’
Investigations, soul-searching, outrage from within the government…. all in response to the successful targeted killing of Hamas military commander Saleh Shehadeh (and his deputy) — a man who orchestrated suicide bombing campaigns responsible for hundreds of Israeli deaths.
It should go without saying that the civilian casualties are tragic. The deaths of innocents are always tragic — though alas, not always preventable in war (the Israeli Airforce reports that the pilot hit his target exactly). It is also true that the IDF and senior political leaders likely miscalculated — or acted on faulty information — in making the decision to launch an F-16 strike in an area so densely populated.
But the intent here was not to kill civilians. The intent here was to kill the man who ordered the routine targeting and killing of Israeli civilians — a monster responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths as a matter both of ideology and strategy.
But why is the outcry from the “world community” more vociferous today than it is when a bunch of Israeli school kids are (as a matter of intent) slaughtered on a bus?
Is it because Israelis use conventional weapons to strike at their enemies, whereas Palestinian militants use pitiably confused humans covered with explosives belts…? Or is it because we expect more from a Democratic country like Israel — in which case, let’s finally drop the charade of cultural equivalency and work to bring the Arab world up to speed, starting with the Palestinians (a culture that, prior to Oslo, was improving economically in leaps and bounds).*
Den Beste offers more, here. Alternately, Jeff Cooper expresses a bit of outrage here. Cooper also writes that the attack “was undertaken with full knowledge that it would result in the death of civilians, the wounding of more, and the destruction of a number of homes.” While this may be true with regard to Shehada’s daughter (who Shehada put in danger by keeping her close by as a kind of human shield), I think it is premature, for the reasons I note above, to extrapolate this out to include a knowing attack on random civilians.
*According to Daniel Doron, president of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress (a private Jerusalem think tank): “During the quarter century from the Six Day War till the Oslo Accords, from 1967 to 1993, political stalemate actually enabled a quiet peace. In those years, Israel maintained a modicum of law and order in Palestinian areas, and the Palestinian economy flourished, its GDP more than quadrupling. The Palestinian standard of living rose dramatically. Infant mortality fell, seven new colleges and universities were established (where none had existed under Jordanian rule), and the welfare of the people, especially of women and children, improved so much that the birth rate soared.”
Most Palestinians seemed to prefer this slowly evolving peace to the political ambitions of their leaders. Thus, shortly after Oslo but before PLO incitement had infected their minds and provoked bloody clashes with Israel, the Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem were asked to choose to receive either Palestinian Authority or Israeli identity papers. Over 95 percent chose Israeli. They did so despite disliking Israeli occupation and loathing Israeli bureaucracy (which drives even Israelis up the wall). They cared more about feeding their families and advancing their personal interests than grabbing for instant political gratification.
Already they were wary of Arafat’s nascent Palestinian Authority. Real estate prices plummeted in Arab sections rumored to be destined for transfer to the Palestinian Authority. More recently, most “experts” predicted that an Israeli move to occupy the Orient House, the PLO’s illegal stronghold in Jerusalem, would see the city’s large Arab population erupt in bloody riots. The State Department sternly warned Israel not to take this step. Yet the takeover last year elicited only feeble protests by a few dozen employees of the Palestinian Authority and some peace activists and Quaker volunteers displaying signs in English for the benefit of CNN.
During the quarter century of relative peace, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians worked in Israel. Crossing through border checkpoints was infuriatingly slow and humiliating, but once inside Israel they had total freedom of movement. Had they been committed to the PLO struggle against Israel, they could have inflicted enormous damage. Yet only a very few of them, generally PLO hirelings, engaged in acts of terrorism.
Most Arabs were reluctant to join in Arafat’s war. Most, after the occupation of the disputed territories in 1967, constituted a silent majority who preferred accommodation with Israel. Even now, when Arabs feel great anger about Israeli military incursions, few express their fury in violent actions. In Jerusalem, Arabs have remained moderate in the face of numerous PLO provocations because they benefit greatly from the commerce generated by tourism, which depends on peace.
From “The Way Forward for the Palestinians” (The Weekly Standard, July 1/8, 2002)
collateral damage
Jeff, looks like there is a missing close italics tag in the middle of this post.
Thanks. All fixed.
Let me mention a side issue first, which is timing. This attack came just as high level talks on security cooperation between Israel and the PA were resuming, and just as senior Hamas people were talking about ending terror attacks given an Israeli withdrawal to the Green Line—an idea that is now scuttled.
This is not the first time that a targeted killing was ordered by the Sharon government in the midst of some promise. In December of 2001, another targeted killing interrupted an extended cease-fire and punctuated Zinni’s visit to the region, for example.
This is a disheartening pattern, but timing is the side issue. More disheartening is the death of 14 innocent people in an attack that, as is mentioned, was planned and reviewed carefully.
While it is good to hear regret from Israeli officials over the use of a 1-ton bomb in a civilian area, what I do not hear is an admission that there is a pattern of attacking/responding with more firepower than necessary.
The bombing that killed the terrorist Shehadeh and numerous innocents and babies was anomalous only in the choice of weapon, not in the fact that the force applied was highly disproportionate.
The use of disproportionate force results in the death of innocent people. Firing live ammunition on crowds throwing stones, or on people mistakenly at a market after curfew, and dropping a bomb on an apartment complex all show a disregard for civilian life that I would argue is typical of the IDF.
In no way does this justify or excuse Palestinian terrorism. There is no doubt that Palestinian terrorists are willfully harming innocents. The question is, are the numerous deaths caused by the IDF justifiable as consequences of self-defense?
It is clear now that dropping a bomb on a civilian neighborhood in order to kill Shehadeh was not a justifiable act, even if the policy of extra-judicial killing itself does pass muster (an idea which is at least debatable).
It should’ve been clear that such an act was beyond the pale even before the bomb was dropped.
Jeff,
The IAF planners had to have known that dropping a one-ton bomb on a rabbit-warren type neighborhood that is typical of Gaza had a very high risk of killing civilians. Further, the proximity of quite a few children was a virtual certainty. The Israelis *know* their environment. Why couldn’t the Israelis have sent in a SWAT team and killed Shehada up close and personal? Didn’t they used to do things like that in Lebanon? Risk? Well yes, being a soldier is risky. In fact, I thought the Israelis had a specially trained unit, Sayeret Matkal, to do just that.
Thanks, Diana and Jim.
Here’s the info. I’m going on, which was sent to me from overseas in document form (sorry, no links):
I just don’t trust Sharon. His denials ring falsely in my ears. I admit that my viewpoint is not disinterested or unbiased, but there it is. Something isn’t true just because Sharon says it’s so. I doubt he’s crying himself to sleep over the matter.
As for the information about previously cancelled jet attacks on Shehadeh, it’s interesting, but in a way it provides no absolution.
If previous jet attacks were cancelled due to concern for civilian harm, why not this one? The argument that it was a mistake just seems flimsy to me.
Israel is using jet fighters in attempts to take out individual human targets, and it is doing this in Gaza, where population density is higher than anywhere else on Earth.
Of course every single time this is done, the risk of collateral damage will be tremendous—that’s a function of the environment and the choice of weapon.
Jetfighters dropping bombs in order to carry out so-called targeted killings exhibits either tremendous ignorance of what bombs do and what Gaza is like, or, more probably, a lack of concern for the consequences to civilians.
Jim writes, “Jetfighters dropping bombs in order to carry out so-called targeted killings exhibits either tremendous ignorance of what bombs do and what Gaza is like, or, more probably, a lack of concern for the consequences to civilians” [my emphasis].
There are other possibilities, Jim—one of which takes shape in that middle space (between either/or) you admit at the outset you’re not willing to examine (by expressing unconditional distrust of Sharon). I think Sharon’s exuberance after learning of Shehadeh’s death—to which he gladly (even proudly) admitted—needs to be counterposed with the information that is now coming out of Israel. Also, I’d like to point out that it was a single bomb (not “bombs,” as you wrote above).
According to the Israeli Airforce, the single bomb hit its target directly. Intelligence sources reported to the politicians who signed off on the strike that the tin shacks adjacent to the target were unoccupied. Israel knows it will lose many of its own trying to enter Gaza on foot to carry out a SWAT-style raid, and so by the calculus of war, they took out the military head of an organization who has sworn never to stop the campaign of suicide bombings against Israeli citizens. And they did so without losing their own soldiers.
Again, any civilian casualties are tragic. But Israel has no chance of winning the PR war, so they proceed in the way that they think will save the most Israeli lives. Targeting Shehadeh—for Sharon and co.—fit that description.
Again, I don’t know what will come of all these internal Israeli investigations—but what I do know is that there are internal Israeli investigations, as well as a free press to expose and malfeasance. Which, you’ll concede, is rare in the region.
Jeff,
The Nahum Barnea article doesn’t address my point. Any Arab neighborhood in Gaza is a super-densely populated urban mass, full of children. The IAF knows that. Why was the IAF used? Why not Sayeret Matkal? Why not commandos?
The Ben-Gurion quote seems to me to be calculated to induce a certain emotion to the argument. Surely you are not suggesting that sending commandos in to kill Shehada is going to put Israel’s existence at risk?
Notice I’m not arguing with the decision to kill Shehada. Just the way Israel did it. The Israelis seem to have gotten to the point where they just don’t give a shit about Arab lives. Maybe that is understandable but it is very dangerous. I’m no Talmudic scholar but somewhere the Talmud warns us that small transgressions inevitably lead to big ones.
Diana —
The articles were offered as sources. I never presented them as arguments—nor as counters to your contentions—as I’d hoped I’d made clear. Regardless, I think I addressed your points in my last response to Jim. To repeat, I think that the powers that be in Israel weighed their options and decided that a commando or copter operation in that neighborhood would put Israeli soldiers lives at too great a risk. Instead, they waited until they got the intelligence report saying the target was effectively clear (to the extent that such can happen at all) and then approved of an on-target direct strike aerial strike—consisting of a single smart bomb.
I don’t believe for a second that the Israelis have gotten to the point where they don’t care about the lives of Arab civilians. Were that truly the case, there are certainly other options available to them more effective in doling out indiscriminate carnage than a single smart bomb.
Shehadeh trusted that comporting himself among civilians would keep the Israelis from attempting to strike him; he was wrong. Clearly, he was gambling with not only his own life, but with the lives of those he surrounded himself with.
From an Israeli perspective, sadly, some imperfect information contributed to an elevated death toll (one man lost most of his family, who were visiting for a wedding and were crammed into one of the rooms—accounting for 6 of the deaths). But in return, they were able to assasinate the military head of an organization that insists it will never stop attacking and targeting Israeli civilians.
I’ll start with the concessions.
1. Israel’s press is to be admired.
2. The general freedom of debate in Israel is to be admired.
3. The fact that even if Sharon was not sorry, he felt he had to say he was sorry, is reassuring—especially since I personally would attribute this not only to international pressure but also to domestic pressure in Israel (including the resignation of Rabin’s daughter).
So Israel is not the root of all evil, and is, in fact, wonderful in many ways.
But I also consider the occupation an institutionalized brutality that Israel should be ashamed of.
With regards to the specifics of this post:
I wrote ‘jetfighters’ and ‘bombs’ as plural not because I meant to suggest that this single incident involved the plural—it was obvious from the article and the post that it did not and I didn’t expect to put one over on the readers.
I did mean to point out that this incident is part of a pattern. The use of a jetfigher and a bomb in this case was not a singular event in the history of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. <a target=”resource window”>Israel has used jet fighters before.</a>
When seeking to assassinate individual terrorists, Israel uses air-delivered weapons whose destructive scope is great: a jetfigher and a bomb this time, a helicopter and a missile last time.
This month, the BBC broadcast footage of a tank firing shells at a group of Palestinian children out after curfew. In that incident, the IDF killed two brothers, one 13 and one 6.
The IDF is investigating that incident, like the use of a bomb to kill Shehadeh is now being investigated—but treating these as isolated incidents is a mistake. They are part of a pattern where tanks plural and jets plural are used where they should not be.
Israel is to be commended for these investigations, though I’ve noted earlier reports from B’Tselem that violence against Palestinians is often uninvestigated. The dead in this case are fortunate to have received publicity.
Jeff, you mention that a bombing may have been chosen as the method that put the fewest Israeli lives at risk. You also chastise me for not being willing to consider the possibility that the use of a bomb was not ignorant or a sign of disregard for Palestinian life.
I still think that the use of a bomb was irresponsible. The bomb did not cause just 14 innocent deaths, it also put 45 people in the hospital and caused 150 people to be less severely injured. This is the nature of Gaza and it is not very credible that the IAF did not know this.
But, granted, shame on me for not at least responding to the alternative in my comment. I presume the only other alternative is that the use of a bomb was a mistake in this case, because of incorrect information about how many civilians were in the area.
My response is that if this was a mistake, it is not the first, or the second, or the third. This is true even if you limit yourself to non-controversial incidents that the Israeli military itself refers to as accidents or mistakes. At some point, when the cost is measured in life, the reason for these repeated mistakes must be questioned.
I see a pattern, and I think there is an organizatonal cause for it.
I don’t think the pattern is one of a complete and total 100% disregard for Palestinian life. But I do think it evidences a level of disregard that is alarming.
Jim–
I didn’t mean to chastise you, or to suggest you were trying to put one over on me (or anyone else) with the mention of plural bombers or jetfighters. I’m sorry if it came across that way.
I’ll respond to the rest when I have a bit more time, but in the interim, I’ll simply say that I think Israel is held to impossibly high standards militarily, and that many of their enemies actively exploit such a condition and operate out of areas densely populated by civilians.
PS: Here’s a good Ha’aretz piece on the bombing.
And, by the way, I’ve since read that eyewitnesses saw two jets, though only one bomb was dropped.
PPS: No worries, Jeff.
You have to wonder sometimes.
Would it have been justifiable to take out Hitler with a bomb in, oh, 1937, with the additional collateral cost of about 50 schoolkids?
If not, why not?
It’s impossible to forsee the future, of course. Arafat’s not going to be driving the PLA much longer – if, indeed, he is now. Perhaps Israel is weeding out the competent candidates for his sucessor, and at the same time making it clear that they’re not going to be overly concerned about collateral damage.
If so – more power to them.
J.
There’s been a lot of Israeli babies killed, and I don’t see the Israelis waving their dead bodies around in the air for a photo op. Nor do I see the media interested in publishing grisly front page photos of dead Israeli children.
It is a shame those people were killed. But it’s also a shame Shehada has masterminded the deaths of over a hundred Israelis in suicide bomb attacks that targeted innocent civilians. If he hadn’t done that, he and those other people would be alive today. Taking him out will almost certainly save more lives than it cost. You don’t let a serial killer walk free because he might not kill again.
I remain baffled as to why we are supposed to feel especially sorry for the Palestinians crying over their dead children–children killed by accident–when they’ve been killing Israeli children by the dozens, even deliberately shooting them in their beds.
It’s sad those Arab children died, but it’s just not the same.
The suggestion made above of taking a commando team into the area is not practical (unless you are willing to risk a lot more lives). Without going into detail, let’s just say you need to read up on military matters a bit more.
And the Israelis have been after this guy for a long time. If they’d had a better opportunity to take him out, they’d sure as hell have done it already.
As for this “coming in the middle of talks,” there have been “talks” going on for forty years. Yes, the PA claims they were “about to stop the attacks and now they cannot promise this will happen.” I respectfully suggest they are lying sacks of shit and they had no intention of promising any such thing, and even if the PA had, Hamas has flat out said they would never, ever stop.
Bottom line–this is war, the Israelis have had a staggering amount of patience, and there is nothing special about this attack–except the media likes dead Arab kids and the Palestinians never miss a PR opportunity.
The space aliens have landed in your Comments, Jeff.
It is a shame that civilians were killed, but it is the inevitable result of Palestinian policy. Had the Israelis deliberately set out to kill civilians for the sake of it there would be a legitimate complaint. However it was a legitimate target. While I have sympathy for the individuals kiled, for Palestinians as a group I have none. Hamas made their bed, let them lie in it.
Why not commandoes like Maktal? Because you’re repeating a Mogadishu-style operation, that’s why. Helicopters into a heavily populated residential neighbourhood, traversing miles of enemy territory? And you think he won’t escape? And you think you’d get away with 40 Palestinians injured at the end?
The death toll in Mogadishu was 1,000 or so Somalis by the time the Rangers and Deltas were extracted. Is that what we want instead?
A strike by a missile, which gives no early warning and no time to escape, was by far the best alternative. both for the success of the mission, and for the casualty count.
Yes, civilians died. War is hell. It is not a sport, and as Pejman notes the 4th Geneva Convention plainly states that the presence of civilians cannot be used to invalidate a legitimate attack on a military target.
This, too, protects civilians. Otherwise, your enemies will use human shields at every opportunity. Becausae that is what you taught them to do by giving them safety as a reward for this practice. Long term, how many civilians will that kill? Many. Because sometimes war is not optional, and then those habits of hiding among human shields will prove very, very costly of civilian life.
Hamas declared war a long time ago. Their stated goal is extermination of the Jews in Israel. You may grant them cease-fires at times (why?), but the war will continue. They’ve been very up front about this, and it might behoove us to take that rhetoric seriously. I do not believe for one minute any promise they would make. After all the broken Palestinian promises to date, I’m puzzled why anyone else would either.
Gaza has the highest population density on the planet, Jim? When did it shoulder aside Macau, Monaco, Hong Kong, Singapore and Gibraltar?
Ok, nitpicky. But that’s me. Usually when I see statements like that I go check them out. It’s a flaw.
Okay. Today’s newspapers DON’T HAVE COMMENTS ABOUT POWELL/TENET and how the Egyptians are being handed control over the Palestinian “security apparatus.
ME THINKS Sharon’s bomb hit home. BLEW the wobbly Bush position to KINGDOM COME.
Better. The Christian Coalition is planning a march on Washington for October 11th. To tell Bush THIS BASE doesn’t want a “Palestinian State!” They want Israel supported.
Ah, what if among the 2-million Christians who belong to this organization, a march on Washington hits 1967 proportions when buses showed up and LBJ flew home to Texas afraid to run again.
Yeah. RFK was assasinated. And, the dems died. Nixon got into office. And, our country hasn’t really recovered. But will fire fight fire? Will Bush be the next Texan sent home?
Bad news tip toes in. When was the last time you r ead anything in your newspaper (or heard on the alphabet news) and you believed what you were hearing?
3 years to a terrorist state added to the Mideast? Really?
David Perron,
Mea maxima culpa. I heard and read that Gaza had the highest population density on Earth and took it as fact without checking. I was wrong.
According to the 1999 CIA World Factbook, Gaza has the sixth highest population density on Earth. Macau, which you mention, is #1. The 2001 numbers appear similar.
Apologies for the mistake.
That said, sixth-highest is still pretty darned high, and still supports the contention that it was irresponsible of Israel to drop a 1-ton bomb.
There are counter-arguments to that contention, but they don’t rest on whether Gaza is 1st or 6th in population density—so, on to the other points.
Toren, you write:
First, we are not supposed to feel “especially” sorry. Just as sorry as we ought to whenever a child dies unecessarily—including an Israeli child.
You don’t “see the media interested in publishing grisly front page photos of dead Israeli children.” I presume that you imply from this statement and the one above that there is a general media inattention to Israeli deaths. If so, then you are incorrect.
CNN’s in-depth special, Victims of Terror is focused solely on the Israeli victims of Palestinian terror attacks. The biographies of over 250 individual Israelis killed are available on CNN’s web site.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but it suggests that the media do indeed report Israeli deaths, and give them weight. No such memorial on CNN exists for dead Palestinians, not even one called Victims of Accidents.
I don’t find support for your contention that “the media likes dead Arab kids” more than it does dead Israeli kids.
In fact, there is evidence of the opposite. FAIR reports that “For NPR, Violence Is Calm if It
I just love armchair moralists.
If the IDF didn’t target the Hamas pig regardless of the civilian casualties that would result, and it really was an accident, Israel should never have admitted it. The killing of Palestinian civilians collateral to taking out a legitimate target teaches a valuable lesson: Harbor terrorists, and you risk sharing their fate.
It’s an important lesson to teach and be taught.
(For the nub of my reasoning behind this, see this article.)
ACD
Consider this
I don’t think anyone is trying to refute Israel’s right to remove a murder. However, by saying that the civilian loss was merely tragic opens the flood gates to defending “collateral” civilian deaths in Hamas suicide attacks against military targets (a majority of the attacks until recently).
In fact, it would be difficult to reconcile one position with the other, inside a “war framework.” Yet people have been screaming about suicide attacks against military targets from day one as attrocities.
Furthermore, this argument does not go anywhere to excuse reckless attacks against only civilians. However, the terrorists groups, being relatively independent, could also use the excuses Sharon is adopting, i.e. “we just didn’t know.” Of course, there is one caveat, who decides what makes one person/group a target and not another (i.e. are settlers, and are some palestinians just because they might be associated with Hamas, etc)? And under what system does someone stand to die without trial on mere allegations (a question both sides would never want to answer)?
Morally, if you dismiss one, you set a precedent that most people would not want to adhere to. It would create a situation that would create a great paradox (or for some a relative morality, by being understanding of one side).
Frankly, neither side is going to win this argument. Israelis’ actions are wrong. Palestinians’ tactics are wrong. Something has to give.
There won’t be peace until the Palestinians start treating the splodeydopes and their sponsors the same way they treat “collaborators” (that is, their fellow Arabs who are trying to stop the suicide bombings). Until they start dragging Hamas, Tanzim, Hezbollah, et al out into the streets and lynching them, they are the collective enemy of the Israeli people.
At the moment however they let the Islamikazes operate freely and more or less openly among them, celebrating their successes and mourning their defeats. What the Israelis have to do is to convince the average Palestinian that the splodeydopes pose a greater threat to him than he does the Israelis. The only way I can see for the IDF to do this is through massive, utterly disproprtionate retaliation, and guaranteed first strike kills on military targets regargless of their location or the presence of Palestinian civilians.
Is this policy cold cruel and barbaric? Absolutely. It’s called war and it is a terrible thing.
Personally, I think too many people watch too much Star Trek….there seems to be some belief that the IDF can set their phasers on stun so civilians won’t be killed and they can use their transporters to beam away teams in and out of the bad guy’s headquarters with pinpoint precision. Oh, and the IDF can just set their deflector shields on maximum and that way they won’t have to shoot back when the Palestinians hurl rocks and molotov cocktails and the occassional sniper round at them.
The Israelis had information that Shehada, his lieutenant(s), and a group of operatives were in this building planning future operations. That makes the building itself a legitimate target for destruction (it was a command post) along with the occupants.In other words, the use of a 1-ton bomb is justified and the responsibilty for the dead civilians lies with the genius that decided a residential neighborhood was a nifty spot for a military facilty.
“Checkpoints, curfews, and the purportedly accidental deaths caused by bombings, tank shells, and soldiers’ bullets, are, in my view, part of a pattern of enforced suffering that is careless with Palestinian life. This pattern is what I object to.”
How do you say this unctuous crap with a straight face?
This “pattern” you so self-righteously object to was necessitated by repeated terrorist actions. There have been many periods when Palestinians had freedom of movement within Israel (as Jeff pointed out, the standard of living was a lot higher too) but they chose to deliberately menace the Israeli population in horrifying and unpredictable ways – what are Israelis supposed to do? You talk like the Israelis created this “pattern” out of thin air, because they want to “enforce suffering” for some unstated reason.
Does anything said on this site actually get through to you, or are you just copying and pasting soundbites from Counterpunch?
”…I presume that you imply from this statement and the one above that there is a general media inattention to Israeli deaths. If so, then you are incorrect. CNN’s in-depth special, Victims of Terror is focused solely on the Israeli victims of Palestinian terror attacks. The biographies of over 250 individual Israelis killed are available on CNN’s web site.”
CNN only did this after lengthy concerted pressure from Honest Reporting and other organizations (see http://www.honestreporting.com for details). Two years into this stupidfada, media are only now beginning to give attention to Israeli deaths, and it still isn’t equal. If this is your only example, you have your head in the sand.
Yehudit writes: “How do you say this unctuous crap with a straight face?”
I’ll tell you how. I’ve taken the trouble to familiarize myself with both sides of the argument in this conflict.
The argument from the Palestinian side is straightforward: The first Palestinian suicide or bomb attack inside Israel since 1998 occurred in November of 2000. This over a month after the beginning of the intifada in late September.
In other words, the pattern of horrible violence against Israeli civilians began after the IDF had used excessive lethal force to kill Palestinian demonstrators armed with rocks and stones.
Check out Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the data, that’s where I got it.
You ask “what are Israelis supposed to do?” Well, the answer is different based on what you think came first. If you think Palestinian terrorism, after years of relative peace, started first—then your opinion makes more sense.
But the Palestinian case is that the renewal of terrorism in 2000 began after and in response to Israel’s killing of civilians. This viewpoint seems to be supported by the data, and I’m not exactly using an unbiased third-party as a source. I am using Israel’s own government.
In this case, very different conclusions have to be drawn.
And in case you missed it, right after the CNN example, I linked to the FAIR report on how Palestinian deaths are reported in the media. That’s two linked examples in support of my contention, vs. zero from you. Thanks for raising the standard of debate.
As for other posters who argue that it was worth it to take out Shehadeh because of the many deaths he was responsible for—even at the cost of 9 children and 4 other innocents—my response is:
1) Why not a missile instead of a bomb? Or a lower tonnage bomb?
2) The Shehadeh cause should not be considered alone, but in the context of other, similar Israeli actions, some even more egregious, one or two of which I linked to in a previous comment (but here’s another—check out this quote, “The army said its soldiers mistakenly fired shells and artillery into a crowded market of shoppers who believed the curfew had been lifted.”)
What may look justified in isolation (and certainly many argue that even in isolation the Shehadeh bombing was a mistake), looks much less supportable if it is one instance among many of civilian lives being cheap when they are Palestinian. Most of the other instances can’t be explained as attempts to take out “the Palestinian Hitler.”
She did provide a link, to honestreporting.com. Sheesh.
Well, my bad.
But anyway, the CNN thing wasn’t my only example, so that’s one wrong for each of us.
That’s enough score-keeping for one post.