Terror Tunnels The Case for Israel's Just War Against Hamas (13 page)

In Italy, Gianni Vattimo is openly gay and proud of it. He has described himself as a “gay, Communist Catholic.” I challenge him to travel to Gaza with a partner and to declare that he intends to practice his right to be treated equally and fairly with his partner.

We all know what would happen to Vattimo if he engaged in any such freedom of speech or action. He would be tortured and killed by Hamas.

If Vattimo is afraid to travel to Gaza now, let him go to Iran. He was an admirer of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and continues to support the Iranian policy of “making the state of Israel disappear from the map.” Were he to visit the country he admires so much, and were he to publicly proclaim his sexual orientation, he would be hanged from one of the building cranes that the mullahs use to make sure that Ahmadinejad’s notorious statement—that “there are no gays in Iran”—becomes true. He would also be attacked if he were to advocate Communism, Catholicism, or any “ism” other than anti-Zionism.

Were he to travel to Israel, on the other hand, he would be free to openly support Hamas and to advocate and practice his sexual preference. He would also be free to support Communism, practice Catholicism, or advocate anti-Zionism.

In one respect, and perhaps in one respect only, Hamas-controlled Gaza, mullah-controlled Iran, and democratic Israel are exactly the same: in all three countries, everyone is free to condemn Israel and to support Hamas.

Why then would a so-called intellectual—and a self-proclaimed leftist—himself support, and urge others to help, a murderous terrorist group whose roots are in Nazi fascism and whose policies deny equality to women, gays, Christians, atheists, and dissenters. Is it because he loves Hamas, or because he hates the nation-state of the Jewish people so much that he is prepared to close his eyes to the abuses of the terrorist group he supports?

The answer seems clear. Gianni Vattimo does not deserve the noble title of philosopher. He should be called by what he is: a hatemonger who applies a different standard in judging Hamas, Iran, and Israel.

Recently, Vattimo apologized to an Israeli newspaper (
Haaretz
) for saying he wished more Israelis were dying, claiming he was “provoked” by the hosts of the show on which he made his comments, but he repeated his comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany and maintained his view that Europe should provide more lethal weapons to Hamas, which would, of course, result in more Israeli civilians dying.

I urge Gianni Vattimo to accept my challenge and visit Gaza and/or Iran, rather than continuing to preach hatred of Israel and support for Hamas from the safety of Italy.

28

UN Probe of Israel Will Only Encourage Hamas War Crimes

July 24, 2014

“There you go again,” as Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter. Once again the United Nations Human Rights Council has voted—with the United States dissenting—to conduct a so-called investigation of Israel’s military responses to Hamas’s double war crimes. Once again Israel will have to decide whether to feed the kangaroos that make up this court by cooperating with yet another phony investigation whose outcome is predetermined.

Yet again Israel is presented with a Hobson’s choice: if it refuses to cooperate, it will be blamed for denying the investigatory commission relevant information; if it cooperates, it will lend credibility to a conclusion that has already been reached.

This Hamas-inspired investigation is an important part of Hamas’s double war crime strategy: By firing its rockets from civilian areas and buildings—even Ban Ki-moon acknowledges that it does—Hamas seeks to have Israel kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible. This Hamas-designed body count, and the accompanying photographs, inevitably leads to the kind of one-sided investigation in which the UNHRC specializes.

The resulting one-sided condemnation, which Hamas can always count on, then helps it win support in Europe, South America, and other parts of the world, as well as in the media and universities.

By joining in this Hamas strategy, indeed becoming a central part of it, the UNHRC encourages Hamas to repeat its rocket fire against Israeli civilians, its tunneling into Israel to kill and kidnap Israelis, and its placement of its rockets and tunnel entrances in civilian areas. The countries voting for this investigation are fully aware of what they are encouraging. They have the blood of future innocent Palestinians and Israelis on their hands.

Last time around the commission found a willing dupe in Richard Goldstone, who was prepared to put his personal ambition to elevate his status within the international community above any commitment to truth. Because Goldstone is Jewish and has spent time in Israel, his name attached to the commission’s report gave it an air of credibility. His dual conclusions—that Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians and that Hamas did not use human shields—were so thoroughly discredited that they destroyed Goldstone’s career and even his prospects of elevation within the international community. Eventually even Goldstone had to acknowledge his mistake and indicate that there was no evidentiary support for his widely cited conclusions.

This time around it will not be easy for the commission to find an ambitious dupe like Goldstone, because potential commission members now understand that their conclusions, methodologies, and biases will be scrutinized with care and exposed for all to read.

The council will probably have to satisfy itself with a group of overtly anti-Israel zealots who don’t care about their reputations and who are willing to go through the motions of an investigation and come to the conclusion that the commission has anointed them to reach.

This process has already begun with the appointment of William Schabas, a known Israel-hater, as the chairman of the inquiry commission. Even before reviewing any evidence, Mr. Schabas declared that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be tried as a war criminal. Indeed Mr. Schabas has espoused this position since 2011, the same year he cosponsored conferences at a Tehran-based “human rights” center that accuses Israel of the crime of apartheid, and which at the time was led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has also called for the International Criminal Court to prosecute president Shimon Peres, comparing him to Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan who has been indicted for directing the campaign of mass killings in Darfur.
³⁸

It would be useful to have a real investigation of both sides to the conflict conducted by objective experts. I would welcome such an investigation, as I suspect Israel would.

Objective investigators would seek hard evidence, such as real-time videos, communications within the military, forensic evidence, and other information that would allow open-minded investigators to find the facts wherever the facts take them. The problem is Hamas would never consent to such an investigation and would refuse to allow objective investigators into Gaza.

Indeed, the best proof of the pro-Hamas bias of any investigation is the fact that Hamas, which rules Gaza with an iron fist, would welcome these phony investigators with open arms, the way it welcomed Goldstone and his biased colleagues.

Despite the unwillingness of Hamas to allow objective investigators into Gaza, the world should demand a full and unbiased investigation by experienced, professional investigators, unconnected to the United Nations, whose sole responsibility should be to get at the truth, no matter how complex and nuanced it may turn out to be.

Such an independent, real investigation could be conducted at the same time that the phony UNHRC investigation is being conducted. Then the world would have a sound basis on which to compare the methodologies, factual findings, and conclusions of the two investigations. It would also have a sound basis on which to compare Hamas’s actions with Israel’s—and Israel’s to what other democratic countries have done and would do when faced with comparable situations.

Any such investigation would also apply the rules of proportionality to the facts it found concerning Israel’s military actions.

Even Navi Pillay, who runs the UNHRC, has acknowledged that proportionality permits a nation that has been attacked to counterattack enemy military targets so long as the military value of the target is important enough to justify the anticipated civilian casualties. This rule was not designed for situations in which the enemy deliberately uses civilians to shield its military operations.

In any event, the targets Israel has attacked—rockets aimed at civilians and terrorist tunnels built to kill and kidnap Israelis—are extremely important military targets that should not be immunized against counterattacks by deliberate use of human shields. Were the UNHRC to rule that the presence of human shields precludes a democracy from counterattacking important military targets—even after warning the civilians, as Israel does—this would encourage the widespread use of human shields by all terrorist groups around the world and put democracies at great peril. But the UNHRC is likely to ignore that point, as it did in the
Goldstone Report
, and simply respond as Ms. Pillay has already responded, with the following cliché: “The actions of one party do not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law.”

This cliché—which is wrong, as a matter of both law and common sense, when the offending party deliberately uses human shields—is an invitation to Hamas and other terrorist groups to continue its double war crimes.

Israel should have nothing to fear from an objective investigation. It should also have nothing to fear from the UNHRC investigation—if its biases are exposed for all to see.

29

The “Occupation of Gaza” Canard

July 30, 2014

Enemies of Israel who are seeking to justify Hamas rocket and tunnel attacks against Israeli civilians are mendaciously claiming that Israel has continued to occupy the Gaza Strip, even after its soldiers and settlers left the Strip in 2005. They claim that because Gaza was unlawfully still occupied, despite the absence of Israeli soldiers, resistance to the occupation—including the murder of Israeli civilians—is justified as a matter of international law. This claim is wrong for several independent reasons.

First, it is never justified to target and murder enemy civilians. Even if Israel did have a military occupation, as it does in the West Bank, it would still be a double war crime to fire rockets at Israeli civilians, using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

It would also be a war crime to murder or kidnap Israeli civilians. The only legitimate resistance to occupation is to target the soldiers who enforce the occupation.

Second, a military occupation of Gaza—as distinguished from civilian settlements—would be entirely justified, both as a matter of law and common sense, because Hamas, which controls Gaza, is at war with Israel and has repeatedly refused to make peace with the nation-state of the Jewish people. A military occupation is proper as long as a state of war exists.

Third, and even more important for any future peace, is the indisputable fact that Israel, in fact, ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005.

The years between 2005 and the present must be divided into three time periods: 2005 to 2007; 2007 to the beginning of July 2014; and the beginning of July 2014 to the present.

During the first period (2005 to 2007), Israel removed all of its troops from Gaza.

It also removed all of its settlers.

The settlers left behind greenhouses, farm equipment and other valuable civilian assets worth millions of dollars.
³⁹

The Palestinians of Gaza were free to come and go as they pleased, to conduct free elections, and to import construction and other economic material in order to build a viable Palestinian entity to help their citizens. European donors sent them money and other resources, hoping that they would use them to create jobs, schools, hospitals and other necessary infrastructure.

To be sure, Israel maintained control over its border with Gaza, with checkpoints and security fences, but it opened its border to Palestinian residents of Gaza who came to work in Israel. During that period, numerous Gazans came into Israel to work and came back to Gaza with good salaries to feed their families.

During the same period many Gazans went to Egypt and other countries.

Israel continued to control Gaza’s air space and to patrol its sea lanes in order to prevent the importation of rockets and other weapons capable of being used against Israeli civilians, but it had no presence on the ground in Gaza.

On January 25, 2006, the Palestinian Authority held elections. Gazans were free to vote and did in fact vote in large numbers for Hamas, which achieved a significant political victory. But that wasn’t enough for Hamas, which conducted a bloody coup d’état in which numerous Palestinian civilians who were associated with the Palestinian Authority were killed.

Hamas also resumed rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and increased its building of terrorist tunnels into Israel, which it used to kill and kidnap Israelis. It was only after these acts of war by Hamas that Israel instituted its blockade in 2007—nearly two years after it ended its occupation.

So the truth is that the blockade has not been the cause of Hamas’s rocket and tunnel attacks. The blockade has been the result of these attacks. It is an entirely legitimate defensive military response to war crimes committed by Hamas.

Yet there are some—including Mark Lamont Hill and Peter Beinart, with whom I debated on CNN—who insist that Israel continued to “occupy” Gaza unlawfully between 2005 and 2007, before it instituted its blockade.

It’s this kind of rigid, unnuanced argument that makes a compromise peace so difficult.

Finally, we come to the recent war. Israel did not send soldiers into Gaza until after Hamas sent its terrorists into Israel through its tunnels to kill Israelis. It became clear to Israel that it could not tolerate these tunnels, whose exits are located near kindergartens, kibbutzim, and other civilian areas. Nor could these tunnels be attacked from the air, since their entrances are beneath hospitals, schools, mosques, and civilian homes—and their exit locations are unknown to the Israelis.