Terror Tunnels The Case for Israel's Just War Against Hamas (21 page)

Who is responsible for funding projects in this occupied territory of Gaza? Its foreign donors. Israel has withdrawn its financial involvement and has completely ignored its own responsibility for taking care of an occupied territory.

Instead, it has imposed and sieged upon Gaza, which has left Gaza completely without most basic commodities. I think one must understand that Hamas’s resistance to the siege is the primary reason for this conflict.

Also I’d like to stress that Israel was largely responsible for starting this conflict. You would recall that following the death of three Israeli teenagers, Israel embarked upon a savage suppression of Hamas in the West Bank.

There was no evidence that Hamas was responsible for those killings. Israel started the suppression of Hamas in the West Bank, and that sparked off the rocket firing from Gaza. I don’t think it’s clear, or it’s fair to say, that Hamas was responsible for initiating the present conflict.

Professor Dershowitz:
Hamas leaders admitted responsibility for this yesterday.

Professor Dugard:
I was not aware of that.

Male Audience Member:
If it wasn’t for the Iron Dome, I think there would be a lot more casualties on the Israeli end as well.

My question is, I understand the principle of distinction, and it’s required to distinguish between a military objective and a population, and to direct operations against only military objectives.

Military objectives include combatants, which by their nature, location, and purpose, make effective contributions to military action. My question is that if there are rockets being fired out of schools, and being fired out of mosques, and being fired out of hospitals, for the principle of distinction, wouldn’t these be considered military objectives?

Professor Dugard:
If we have evidence that mosques and schools are being used for rocket launching, then Israel will be entitled to respond, but there is no clear evidence… We find no evidence to support Israel’s case. I suspect that this time around, there is still no evidence to support it.

These are matters that should be referred to international tribunal for investigation. I stand by my view that Israel has acted without regard for civilian lives and accounts for the high number of civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip.

Professor Dershowitz:
What accounts for the high number of civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip is that Hamas adamantly refuses to allow civilians to use the shelters that it built. It only allows its terrorists, yes, I’m using the word terrorists.

Terrorists are people who target civilians, children and women like the Vogel family, and like the three children who were kidnapped. They are terrorists, yes, they are terrorists. Hamas doesn’t allow its civilians to use the shelters, only the terrorists can use the shelters.

They want civilians to die, they want them to be killed. Professor Dugard, you can go over the evidence in mosques, look online. There is a videotape of a tunnel being built from a prayer room in a mosque. There is a videotape on Indian television and French television of rockets being fired from near UN facilities.
⁵⁹

If you acknowledge that a mosque that is used to fire rockets is a legitimate military target, then Israel cannot be charged with any violation if it is firing back on targets and abiding by the rules of proportionality, which it is.

What people are afraid of are judges like you, Professor Dugard. I would not want Israel to be tried in front of you. You’ve made up your mind. You said you saw the evidence. Hamas didn’t let you see the evidence. The only reason they let you in to look at the evidence is they know which side you are on.

If an objective person like Ocampo came in, they would hide the evidence from him.

Female Audience Member:
Professor Dershowitz, you’ve openly and publicly supported practices such as waterboarding, in other words, torture, in the United States—

Professor Dershowitz:
Absolute lie. I have opposed waterboarding…

Female Audience Member:
Can I finish my question? As far as I understand, as far as I’ve read, you support, under certain circumstances, the use of waterboarding by the US administration in the case of terrorism. To me, this indicates that you do not respect the fact that there are certain boundaries that cannot be crossed, in international relations, in terms of human dignity.

Professor Dershowitz:
You have absolutely and categorically lied to this audience. I am opposed to waterboarding. I have led the campaign against torture and waterboarding in the United States. I have been opposed to all forms of torture from the very beginning.

I don’t know what you are reading or what you’re seeing, but the statement in fact you made is categorically and unequivocally false. What I have argued is that if there is going to be any use of these despicable tactics, there should be at least a warrant requirement before their use. That’s my position. Please don’t misrepresent it.

Professor Dugard:
[Dershowitz] has repeatedly praised Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. It’s important to realize that Ocampo took three years to consider the 2009 Palestinian Declaration accepting the jurisdiction as a court.

He could have taken the decision on this matter within one month, if he was going to reach the conclusion that he reached. I really believe he was put under tremendous pressure from the United States, as I believe the present prosecutor is.

One should not underestimate the influence of the United States in the International Criminal Court, and the decision to prosecute. I believe that the present prosecutor could prosecute on the basis of the 2009 declaration, but under pressure from the United States, and under pressure from Israel—

Professor Dershowitz:
What you are saying is that the International Criminal Court is subject to pressure, political pressure, and that it is not really a legitimate court?

Male Audience Member:
Professor Dugard, your entire argument is predicated on, based on the blockade or the circle blockade by the Israelis in Gaza, but you selectively ignored the fact that between period of 2005 and 2007, there was no blockade whatsoever.

In fact, the blockade only came following the indiscriminate rockets which are being fired from Gaza into the civilian population of Israel. Only thereafter, then Israel, in your own words, becomes a policeman to effectively monitor, or it attempts to monitor, or stop the rockets that were coming indiscriminately during the period which there was no blockade. Can you please answer that?

Professor Dugard:
It’s important to stress that the blockade has been imposed as a punishment upon the entire population of Gaza, that Israel has made no effort to distinguish between its punishment of Hamas and its punishment of the people of Gaza. That’s why I say that it has engaged in an unlawful siege of Gaza. Its occupation is unlawful.

It’s important to end on the note that I started on. That is that Israel has engaged in indiscriminate firing at and shooting of civilian targets, and this is evidenced very clearly by the number of Palestinian deaths and the number of wounded people and the extensive damage to property in the Gaza Strip.

I don’t think that one can in any way justify Israel’s action. The international community, public opinion, and the world outside the United States and Israel is rightly outraged by Israel’s behavior. I do hope that Israel has the opportunity to appear before a proper International Criminal Court. I’m convinced it would be found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Professor Dershowitz:
The very fact that international opinion is against Israel when Israel has been engaging in an act of self-defense against Hamas, that uses human shields and fires indiscriminately and uses tunnels of death, is part of the problem.

The very fact that public opinion is against Israel as the result of statements made by Professor Dugard and others, is why Hamas is going to continue to do this. Why Hamas is going to continue to engage in terrorism. Why it’s going to continue to kidnap young children and murder them! Why it’s going to continue to be like ISIS except that its charter is somewhat worse.

The very fact that Professor Dugard won’t recognize matters of degree, that Israel did a good thing when it ended its military occupation of Gaza and took its civilian settlements out of Gaza, that he refuses to give any credit for that makes it difficult for Israel to do the same thing on the West Bank.

Israel cannot completely end military control over its borders. It can never allow tunnels to be dug under its borders.

I say this categorically, no country in the history of the world faced with threats comparable to those faced by Israel has ever complied better with the rule of law, has ever done more to protect civilians, and has ever done more to protect human rights and human liberty.

Nor has any government faced with such threats ever had a better judiciary that has held its soldiers accountable. I challenge you all in the audience to think of any country faced with comparable threats that has done better than Israel. If I am right, then why, I ask you, is Israel singled out for this double standard?

Why, among all the people in the world that are committing horrendous crimes, is Israel the only country that is now suggested to be brought to the court of public opinion and to the courts of law? Answer that question, please.

C
ONCLUSION

How to Assure Another Gaza War in Two Years

Even if the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas holds for a while, it will probably not last.
⁶⁰
The international community is doing everything in its power to assure that once Hamas regroups and rearms, it will once again attack Israel with better rockets, deeper tunnels and more effective use of human shields. Hamas will once again deploy its dead baby strategy—placing its rocket launchers and tunnel entrances in densely populated areas so that Israel will have to kill civilians in order to attack these military targets. It will reprise this strategy because it always works. It works because Hamas makes it easy for the media to show the dead civilians but difficult to show the rockets and tunnels behind and beneath these civilian human shields.

The result of this one-sided emotional display of dead bodies is outrage against Israel for causing so many civilians deaths and demands for international investigations and prosecutions of Israeli officials and soldiers. Israel wins the war on the ground, while Hamas wins the war of international public opinion. Hamas then regroups and rearms, while Israel suffers permanent reputational damage for doing what every democracy would do—and doing it with fewer civilian casualties. So why shouldn’t Hamas repeat its winning tactic over and over again?

One answer might be that Hamas knows that if it once again fires rockets and builds tunnels in densely populated areas, more civilians will die, more buildings will be destroyed, and more misery will be spread among the people of Gaza. Most armies would be deterred by such knowledge. But not Hamas. Not only do its leaders
not
worry about these tragic results, they welcome them. The more dead civilians, the better for implementing their public relations strategy. It worked before and it will work again. So why not repeat it?

The
Goldstone Report
, which blamed Israel for the civilian casualties of Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and 2009, begat the rocket and tunnel attacks that led Israel to conduct Operation Protective Edge. Now Hamas is seeking a sequel to Goldstone—this time conducted by an anti-Israel zealot, who has already convicted Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu of war crimes before seeing any of the evidence. Sequels beget sequels, and it is entirely predictable that Hamas will win this postwar battle of words and condemnation and that it will try to reprise its victory by once again deploying its reliable dead baby strategy—perhaps in a year, or maybe two, but it will happen. You can count on it.

Indeed on September 7, 2014—just two weeks after Hamas purported to accept the cease fire—
Haaretz
reported that “Israel has received intelligence indicating that Hamas has begun reconstructing the attack tunnels” and “preparing for the next confrontation with Israel and is focused on replenishing its arsenals [including] M75 rockets capable of reaching… central Israel.”
⁶¹
The
Jerusalem Post
reported that the official said that “just as Hamas prepared itself following Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, ‘step by step’ for the next round, they are already starting to do the same thing now.”
⁶²

The only way to end this recurrent war with far too many casualties is to expose and condemn Hamas’s dead baby strategy and to recognize it for the despicable double war crime that it clearly is. Blaming Israel only incentivizes Hamas to fight, pause, fight, pause, and fight again.

So here is the twelve-step program that guarantees a repeat of Hamas’s attacks against Israel from behind Palestinian human shields, many of whom will die:

1. Blame Israel, rather than Hamas, for the dead babies.
   
2. Accuse Israel of committing war crimes.
   
3. Have the United Nations manufacture evidence and draw mendacious conclusions against Israel.
   
4. Have the International Criminal Court open an investigation against Israel.
   
5. Call for divestment, boycotts, and sanctions against Israel.
   
6. Demand that the United States cut off aid to Israel.
   
7. Have “academics” offer opinions that it is lawful for people under occupation to resist by firing rockets from civilian areas at civilian targets and digging tunnels whose entrances and exits are in civilian areas.
   
8. Have Holocaust survivors and their children place ads in newspapers comparing what Israel does in self-defense to the Nazi genocide of Jews, without even mentioning the threat to Israel posed by the rockets and tunnels. (See ad in the
   New York Times
   August 23, 2014, p. A13)
   
9. Uncritically accept at face value the Hamas-approved statistics regarding alleged civilian deaths among Palestinian civilians, despite Hamas’s long history of doctoring these numbers.
   
10. Focus on the comparative number of Palestinian and Israeli deaths, without explaining that it is part of the Hamas strategy to increase the number of Palestinian deaths by using civilians as human shields and reserving the shelters only for terrorists.
    
11. Have Nobel Peace Prize winners such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu condemn Israel for using “disproportionate force.”
    
12. Treat democratic Israel as morally comparable to, or worse than, terrorist Hamas.