Facing the truth
The Gaza War's aftermath
Adam Keller
To many an Israeli it initially seemed that the Gaza War had brought back the long-lost consensus.
In Israel's early decades, public support for he country's wars was more or less taken for granted. Israelis quite sincerely considered themselves to be aggrieved innocents, whose dearest wish was to be left in peace and who were the target of unreasoned Arab hatred and hostility, against which Israel had no choice but to defend itself. Peace was a highly desirable goal, whose achievement depended on the Arabs putting an end to their hostility and aggression, and was not connected with Israel's own policies and actions.
True, dissidents of various kinds there had always been in the Israeli society -- communists, pacifists, radicals, a few maverick religious. But they had no chance to make any headway among the general public. Indeed, in most cases the general public was not even aware of their existence.
The Lebanon War of 1982 suddenly broke open the Israeli consensus. For the first time, there was a big and highly visible anti-war movement, including soldiers refusing to fight and going to prison instead. The war became the most hotly contested issue on the Israeli public agenda, the subject of competing rallies for and against. Eventually, Lebanon came to be regarded as "a quagmire" or "Israel's Vietnam" from which the troops had to be extracted.
The controversy carried over to the First Intifada, with the army's oppressive policies in the Palestinian Territories coming under intensive criticism, debate, and soldiers' refusal to take any part in them. A considerable part of the public came to believe that there were substantial concessions -- territorial and other -- that Israel could and should undertake in order to achieve peace. Continuing conflict and bloodshed was ascribed to the government's failure to make such concessions, at least as much as to Arab hatred and intransigence.
Since the end of 2000, the political and military establishment has been waging a concerted and intensive effort to roll back the dissidents' gains, and once again create the "national consensus" of "an Israel united behind her fighting troops".
Once again were the Palestinians (as well as the Lebanese and other Arabs) cast in the role of intransigent and violent fanatics. They had "rejected Barak's generous offers" at Camp David, and "abused Israel's generosity" by firing missiles from unilaterally-evacuated territory -- a version which gained general currency as the new Israeli narrative.
The dissidents -- trying to show that the generous offers were far from truly generous, and that withdrawal from Gaza was far from complete -- were once again marginalized, their voice going mostly unheard.
Protest at the army's brutality in the second Intifada never reached anything like the dimensions of what happened during the first one. Though in many ways the brutality was worse than in the 1980's, many Israeli had become convinced that "the Palestinians brought it on themselves."
The Second Lebanon War of 2006 did eventually spawn a considerable oppositional movement, which had a big share in ending PM Olmert's political career, but it conspicuously failed to take up any criticism of the brutal bombing of civilian populations in Beirut and the villages of South Lebanon.
Rather, protesters denounced the army for being unready for the war and exhibiting various logistic and tactical failings. Most especially, there was public anger and indignation at what was considered an unacceptable high number of Israeli casualties (165 dead).
The logical conclusion was that the Israeli public would give its support to a new war -- provided that the army made better preparations and made a supreme effort to avoid casualties to its own forces. And in December 2008 and January 2009, the army and government proceeded to do just that -- in Gaza.
"A casualty-free war"
Though there may not have been an intentional policy of shooting unarmed Gazan civilians, there clearly were explicit orders, carefully and meticulously carried out, to "take no risk" and "avoid harm to Israeli soldiers, at any price." On the ground, soldiers felt themselves authorized to "shoot at anything that moves" and to "shoot first and ask questions afterwards."
The result, tallied after the three weeks of carnage, was clear enough: ten dead Israeli soldiers (four of them the victims of "friendly fire" by over-industrious Israeli comrades at arms) to at least 1300 dead Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, a large part of these civilians being children.
It must be said that, as far as the general Israeli public was concerned, the ministers and generals proved right in their calculations. Most of the Jewish Israeli society supported the Gaza war, from beginning to end.
True, there were anti-war activists going out on the streets from the war's beginning, and some fairly large protest demonstrations (about 10,000 in the largest). But there was nothing like the expansion and snowballing of protest which had been so evident in 1982 and 1988. Essentially, the same minority of Israelis who opposed the war when hearing of the first bloody bombing were those who still opposed it when the last troops were pulled out.
The ongoing protest, if not completely unreported, had gone grossly underreported in nearly the whole of the Israeli printed and electronic media. Protesters were brutally assailed by police in the streets, and vehemently condemned in the media.
Some of the most vociferous expressions of support for the war came from those who declared themselves to be "former leftists" or "awakened leftists" or "patriotic leftists." It was they who elaborated the doctrine that, since Gazans had freely voted Hamas into power, they deserved to be targeted in retaliation for the missiles shot by Hamas. (Nobody seemed to have thought of the possible logical implications for Israeli voters who bring warlike governments into power...)
Hardly ever before was there such a wide discrepancy between the perception of an event by Israelis and by the rest of the world. Alone among the world's TV networks, Israeli news editors failed almost entirely to show the horrors from Gaza (and even when a small bit was shown, the commentary often dismissed it as "Hamas propaganda photos").
Instead, there were long news items covering the suffering of Israeli civilians under the Hamas missiles (real enough -- but, fortunately for the Israelis, in a completely different league from the suffering on the Palestinian side of the border). Cable TV is widespread in Israel, and the reportage from Gaza was no more than a flick of the remote control away. But few except for the conscientious minority made this effort.
Once the Gaza ceasefire was declared and the last troops withdrawn, the general Israel public went back to normal at record speed. But it turned out to be not so easy to leave the Gaza War behind.
Unwelcome revelations
In March 2009, the first and quite unintentional Gaza War Whistleblower appeared: Danny Zamir, head of the Yitzchak Rabin Pre-Army Leadership Development Program which is supposed to instill some moral values in its graduates -- youths facing an imminent call-up date. Until this year, the institute was on excellent terms with the military authorities.
Shortly after the war, nine graduates of the academy came to visit their former teachers and told of their harrowing experiences in Gaza. Especially, the case of a mother and her two children being shot in cold blood after being
Zamir and his team took the initiative of collecting the soldiers' accounts in a brochure, published in a limited "in-crowd" edition. One copy did reach a journalist -- and instantly got to the pages of the New York Times.
The army authorities acted swiftly. The testifying soldiers were summoned to "an exhaustive interrogation" by the military police, in which no outsiders were present, and with no corroborating evidence from Palestinian witnesses sought. It ended with the announcement that "all testimonies on alleged war crimes" had been exposed as "baseless rumors."
The case was closed as far as the army was concerned. Danny Zamir himself, who started it, published a highly apologetic article, reiterating that the war in Gaza was in itself "completely justified" and that Israeli soldiers were educated to respect the unique moral concept of "purity of arms."
While not quite retracting the testimonies which he published, he stated that they had been given in "a sensitive, personal discussion among combat soldiers back from the battlefield" and "not intended for wider publication", and especially "not to be used for venomous attacks on Israel, transformed into mendacious claims of policies that involve so-called war crimes" (Jerusalem Post, April 7).
The government and military authorities were also presented with no less than 19 separate reports by B'tselem, based on field research and testimonies by Palestinian residents and relating to events in which 70 Palestinian civilians were killed, more than half of them minors. Among them were two letters that detailed "grave suspicions that the military had used Palestinian civilians as human shields in Ezbet-Abd-Rabo in north-eastern Gaza, in violation of international humanitarian law and of an explicit ruling by Israel's own Supreme Court."
As could have been expected, there was not any impartial investigation of any of this. In fact, there was no official response other than a dry terse acknowledgment "Your letter was received and will be dealt with." Even that much of a response was not given to reports sent from outside Israel by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others.
The articles of Amira Hass in Ha'aretz also failed to elicit an official response. Not even the detailed testimonies of surviving Samouni family members, describing how one after the other their parents, children and siblings perished in a series of bombardments -- in all, 29 members of a single close-knit extended family killed in the destruction of their family compound in the fields outside Gaza City. (They had hoped that their excellent Hebrew, gained during many years of working in Israel, would save them; in the event, soldiers shot from a distance and there was nobody to talk to or plead with).
To all press inquiries on this and other reports, officials repeated virtually the same answer: "Our army has high moral standards, and made the greatest effort not to harm civilians. Any reliable report of wrong-doing is being thoroughly investigated by the proper bodies within the army, who are perfectly competent to conduct such investigations." Of course, the testimonies of Palestinians were by definition "unreliable", fabrications and hostile propaganda.
More soldiers break the silence
Testimonies by the army's own soldiers could not, however, be brushed aside so easily. A new wave came from "Breaking the Silence", an organization set up some years ago for the explicit purpose of gathering and publishing this kind of evidence, and not easily intimidated.
The group's activists had managed to locate and talk to hundreds of soldiers who had been in Gaza, but decided to publish only those testimonies for which there was corroboration by two or more soldiers who witnessed the same event. The booklet finally published on July 15 included the testimonies of 28 reservists and conscripts.
There was "serious evidence" for such acts as "the destruction of hundreds of houses and mosques for no military purpose, as well as property inside houses which soldiers entered, the killing of innocents with small arms, and the firing of phosphorous gas in the direction of populated areas." (Some of the victims of that White Phosphorous, which burns unquenchably into the bodies of its victims, were seen on TV during the war itself -- shown to exemplify "Hamas propaganda").
Most of all, Breaking the Silence decried "the permissive atmosphere in the command structure, which enabled soldiers to act without moral restrictions." "We felt like an infantile little kid with a magnifying glass looking at ants, burning them" was the way one of the soldiers described it.
Unlike B'tselem, Breaking the Silence could not complain of a lack of response from the country's civil and military authorities. No peace or human rights organization had ever gotten such a loud, immediate and vehement response.
Within no more than a quarter of an hour after Breaking the Silence came out with its gathered testimonies, Colonel Avital Leibovitch -- the Army's Spokeswoman -- was already able to sweep them aside contemptuously, express the army's deep regret that "another human rights organization has come out with a report based on anonymous and general testimonies" and invite "all soldiers who had something to tell or complain about" to submit their testimonies "in the proper way through the regular channels set up within the army's own command structure." And Defense Minister Ehud Barak likewise lamented that the report was not first brought to him for approval before it was published.
These were the most mild of official reactions. General Tal Ruso of the General Staff's Operations Division -- highly praised for his "courage and excellent battle record" -- stated: "These Breaking the Silence people? Traitors, pure and simple, that's all I can say." Various senior generals and politicians spoke of "collaborators with the enemy" and the like.
Official protest was lodged with the Dutch Government for its financial support to "Breaking the Silence" (first by the Israeli Ambassador to the Hague, then by PM Netanyahu in person) and this support was proclaimed "an intolerable interference in Israel's internal affairs." Afterwards, several of Netanyahu's aides were entrusted with amending the law, so as to forbid peace and human rights organizations (the government used other terms for them) from getting funding from abroad.
Professor Assa Kasher, the philosopher who had some years ago been commissioned by the army to draft "The Soldiers' Code of Ethics", joined the fray and published furious articles demanding that all critics "hold their silence and give the army time to conduct its own internal investigations, which will bring the truth to light." He also offered sophisticated philosophical arguments to prove the contention that "the army must give priority to preserving the lives of its own soldiers over those of the enemy -- even of enemy children."
However, Professor Noam Zohar -- who had also participated in drafting the same "Ethical Code" -- broke with the military authorities and spoke out at a conference called by "Rabbis for Human Rights" to protest the onslaught against "Breaking the Silence."
"We have placed in the Ethical Code a whole section about 'The Purity of Arms', the principle that soldiers should strive to avoid harm to non-combatants. But during the 'Cast Lead' operation, says Zohar, this was in practice rendered irrelevant by the doctrine of 'zero casualties to our forces' which translates into 'the loss of lives of innocent civilians'.
"True, there had been some efforts to avoid harm to civilians by dropping leaflets and creating humanitarian corridors -- otherwise thousands of civilians might have been killed instead of hundreds. But what did happen was bad enough. The worth of the life of a non-Jew was devalued in eyes of the sons we sent to Gaza. With what kind of psyche, in what dire condition of their souls, are they coming back? The military should have heard testimonies and held intensive investigations on its own initiative -- instead of hushing it all up and leaving the investigation to foreign tribunals."
The Goldstone bombshell
While directing its heaviest artillery at "Breaking the Silence" and its dissident soldiers, the government seems to have grossly underestimated the gathering storm coming from the Geneva headquarters of the United Nations' Human Rights Council.
Over the years, the Human Rights Council has been issuing a stream of resolutions denouncing and condemning Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories, Lebanon and elsewhere. Usually, the Israeli government speakers countered by pointing out the far from impeccable human rights record of many UN Member States represented in this council and voting for these anti-Israeli resolutions. Generally this worked, absolving Israel from any need to answer the charges themselves.
This highly predictable thrust and riposte had long since developed into a kind of ritual dance, performed routinely several times a year by lower-echelon diplomats and getting little attention in the media.
When the Human Rights Council resolved in early 2009 to set up a commission to investigate the conduct of the Israeli armed forces in Gaza, the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem reacted by reflex -- ignoring the whole thing and refusing to cooperate in any way with the commission's investigations, with the intention of afterwards denouncing and discrediting its conclusions. By now, commentators from deep within the political establishment acknowledge this as having been "a grave blunder."
To begin with, the Human Rights Council found a worthy person to head its commission. The South African Judge Richard Goldstone has an impeccable record from both his part in the transition from Apartheid to democracy in his own country and his involvement in delicate investigations of human rights abuses in various other conflict zones. His being, not only a Jew himself but also a Zionist with a daughter living in Israel, was under the circumstances, far from irrelevant. It turned out to be not easy at all to dig up any dirt impugning judge Goldstone's credentials.
An even bigger miscalculation was the assumption that Israel was in a position to give or deny legitimacy to the commission's investigation. Instead, the published report was taken quite seriously by the international public opinion, non-withstanding the Israeli government's boycott.
Goldstone and his fellow investigators had gone to Gaza and spent weeks hearing numerous eyewitness testimonies by Palestinians. They also visited the Israeli side of the border, and heard some testimonies by Israeli civilians -- but none from military personnel or government representatives. And they got copies of the reports by Israeli and international human rights organizations.
The Goldstone Report was declared by government speakers to be "worse than expected." The report's scathing criticism was not confined to specific cases of cruel and abusive behavior on the ground by individual soldiers or small units, acts from which the government and army high command could dissociate themselves.
Rather, several chapters were devoted to war aims and overall strategies which in Goldstone's view violated International Law -- in particular, the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, following upon the prolonged tight siege of the Strip maintained for years before the war. (And continued also after the war, especially in preventing the entry of building materials needed to rebuild the thousands of destroyed houses).
True, the Goldstone Report also strongly criticized Hamas, clearly stating that the shooting of missiles at Israeli civilian targets constituted a war crime, and calling upon both Israel and Hamas to conduct a thorough investigation of the wartime conduct of their respective armed forces. But it was exactly this section that drew the most vehement and angry Israeli protests and denunciations. "We utterly reject the equating between terrorists and those who defend themselves against terrorism."
The government became seriously alarmed when, a few days after Goldstone presented his report, an effort was made by activist groups in Britain to get the visiting Defence Minister Barak arrested and indicted on war crimes charges. Some of Barak's advisers suggested that he flee the UK forthwith. Barak decided to brazen it out, trusting to the British government taking care not to let its guest from Israel be subjected to such an indignity.
The government's legal experts determined, however, that people below the ministerial echelon faced a real threat of being detained and prosecuted. Serving and former military officers whose names were mentioned in the Goldstone Report were advised to avoid visiting the "dangerous countries", i.e. those whose legal codes enable courts to deal also with war crimes which were not committed on their soil.
The British lawyer Daniel Makover -- himself a former Israeli -- confirmed to Ha'aretz that a network of human rights advocates and groups is busy compiling material in preparation for lodging just such a series of prosecutions in different European countries.
Searching for an escape route
While setting up a governmental "top legal team" to counter such suits, Netanyahu sought also to locate co-defendants among the armed forces of the world: "The standards set up by Goldstone would make it impossible to fight terrorism... If Israeli officers get to the dock in the [International Criminal Court in] The Hague, then American and British officers would soon follow them for acts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Russian officers for Chechnia... International Law does not fit for the conditions of a world having to fight terrorism, it must be changed."
However, the prime minister must have realized that scrapping the Fourth Geneva Convention and legalizing many acts considered a war crime over the past half a century, would not be a quick measure, if at all possible. He found something over which he has more control: "Adoption of the Goldstone Report would endanger the peace process. We cannot negotiate with the Palestinians while at the same time they proceed to accuse us of war crimes." (But he does expect the Palestinians to negotiate with Israel while settlement construction continues...)
The Obama Administration, wanting at all costs to "jump-start" the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, proved amendable, putting enormous pressure on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to let the UN Human Rights Council shelve the Goldstone Report and delay for at least half a year its referral to the UN institutions in New York.
Abbas, who gave in to the Americans, soon realized his mistake. It aroused an unprecedented storm of protests among Palestinians, not only from his Hamas foes but also from his own closest followers. Abbas was roundly accused of collaborating with Israel. Never had it come to this; not during the years-long "security cooperation" with Israel; not even when the security forces under Abbas' command carried out several extrajudicial executions of Hamas militants.
To survive, Abbas had no choice but to re-submit Goldstone to the Human Rights Council. No longer affecting to disregard this body, Netanyahu and his ministers conducted an intensive international lobbying campaign, phoning to heads of state, pleading and imploring them to vote "no."
To no avail: the Goldstone report was approved by a large majority -- including Russia and the world's two emergent economic powers, China and India, and with most Europeans absenting themselves.
Another UN vote, this time in the Assembly General -- where nobody has veto power. Again, despite Netanyahu's most frantic efforts, the report was approved by a large majority. He countered, however, in a forum far more amenable to his wishes -- the US Congress. A resolution condemning Goldstone was prepared by the Israeli lobby and duly approved by a huge majority -- not binding, but Obama certainly can't just ignore it, especially as it was approved by Democrats as well as Republicans.
Assembly General resolutions are also not binding and most of them are confined to dusty archives soon after passage. The Goldstone Resolution, however, was cleverly crafted -- giving Israel (and Hamas) three months to set up an impartial investigation of their own, after which the Secretary General is to report on their progress (or lack of it) and refer the matter to the Security Council -- which has the power to refer war crimes cases for prosecution at the Hague (and has done so in the past, for defendants from Africa and the former Yugoslavia).
The US can, of course, veto any such proposal where Israel is concerned (among other reasons, also because it might really create a precedent touching upon American officers). But vetoing the report might prove an impediment for the US in its dealings with the Palestinians and the entire Arab and Muslim World.
To avoid this hot potato, the Americans expressed the urgent wish that Israel would indeed launch an investigation of what happened in Gaza -- an investigation serious and impartial enough to plausibly justify the international community from keeping off its hands.
To investigate -- or not to investigate
An increasing number of Israeli mainstream commentators have come to the conclusion that this is truly the only way out of the trap. Again and again, articles appear in the press, typically starting with strong denunciations of Goldstone and his report but concluding with "nevertheless, we have no choice but to start an investigation of our own, the sooner the better."
A large part of the political decision makers -- and not necessarily those identified as "moderates" -- have come around to the same opinion. For example, Foreign Minister Lieberman, outspoken racist provocateur that he usually is, does have from time to time to listen to the corps of professional Israeli diplomats and their dire warnings.
Originally, Defence Minister Barak seemed of the same opinion. In fact, he is reported to have unofficially approached his namesake Aharon Barak (no family relation), former Supreme Court President, to head such an investigation. Given Barak the judge's personal standing and prestige, both in Israel and internationally, an investigative team headed by him might be taken seriously abroad and deflect the further involvement of foreign tribunals. However, by the same token Aharon Barak would not lend his name to any but a full and unfettered investigation, with full access to all relevant documents and witnesses.
This, however, turned out to be unacceptable to the Army's high command. General Gabi Ashkenazi, in command of the Israeli Defence Forces, made clear that he and his fellow generals would in no way accept an investigation "placing in doubt the army's ability and competence to investigate the acts of its own soldiers."
Ashkenazi reportedly threatened to resign should officers be "subjected to humiliating interrogations and become tied up with lawyers and legalities." This would "severely damage the officers' morale and ability to lead men into war again."
Barak the minister thereupon took up wholly the generals' objections and their veto of Barak the judge -- and though he represents only a minority, his standing with Netanyahu is such that the PM would not order an investigation into Gaza against the Defence Minster's wishes.
On the issue of the Gaza investigation -- as on many other fundamental issues -- the Netanyahu government seems unable to take crucially needed decisions. The Israeli ship of state seems to drift rudderless, deeper into stormy waters.
