RUTHFULLY YOURS

How to lose battles and gain sympathizers.

Once again neighboring enemies are warring in diametrically opposite ways.

Hamas sees the death of its civilians as an advantage; Israel sees the death of its civilians as a disaster. Defensive missiles explode to save civilians in Israel; in Gaza, civilians are placed at risk of death to protect offensive missiles.

Hamas wins by losing lots of its people; Israel loses by losing a few of its own. Hamas digs tunnels in premodern fashion; Israel uses postmodern high technology to detect them. Hamas’s missiles usually prove ineffective; Israel’s bombs and missiles almost always hit their targets. Quiet Israeli officers lead from the front; loud Hamas leaders flee to the rear. Incompetency wins sympathy; expertise, disdain.

Westerners romanticize the Hamas cause; fellow Arabs of the Gulf do not. Westerners critical of Israel are still willing to visit Israel; sympathizers of Hamas do not wish to visit Gaza.

Democracy and free markets bring Westerners liberty, human rights, and prosperity — but many Westerners scorn these things in Israel, siding with those who deny human rights, ruin their economy, and practice a brutal prejudice against women, gays, and non-Muslims. In Gaza, a gay reporter, a female reporter with bare arms, a reporter with a small crucifix around his neck, the rare journalist who, surrounded by screaming Hamas supporters, dares to broadcast the truth from Gaza — all these in private would admit to being in fear while they are in Gaza in a way they are not when in Israel.

If 1,000 Arabs a week are killed by other Arabs in Syria and Iraq — whether bombed, shot, gassed, or beheaded — the Western world snoozes. If 400 Arabs are killed in a three-week war with Israel, that world suddenly awakes to damn Israelis as killers. Apparently the West, in racist fashion, assumes that killing one another is what Arabs do best. But when Israelis kill those who wish to kill them, outrage follows.

When Israel wins militarily, it seems to lose politically. When Hamas loses, it seems to win. A European may like the idea of Westerners’ losing to non-Westerners, as long as it is not himself who loses.

Europeans do not protest much when Vladimir Putin carves up Georgia or swallows Crimea. When Russian surrogates shoot down a passenger plane carrying many Europeans, Europe nonetheless stays mostly quiet. There are no protests in Paris over the divided city of Nicosia and the harsh Turkish occupation of Cyprus, which has lasted four decades now. No one in Berlin objects that Russia occupies the Sakhalin Islands or China has absorbed Tibet. Europeans assume that the strong who could hurt them can dictate as they wish.

Once again, in warfare between Israel and its neighbors, Israel’s critics note the many more dead and wounded among the Jewish state’s adversaries than among Israelis and attack Israel for disproportionate use of force. While photos of dead and wounded civilians, or of non-combatants desperately fleeing fighting around their homes, should elicit everyone’s sympathy, the translating of that sympathy into a “proportionality” argument with which to beat Israel is less an expression of humane sensitivity to the plight of innocent victims than a display of sanctimonious depravity.

International law includes a concept of proportionality as it applies to warfare. Intentionally targeting civilians constitutes not simply a criminal act but a crime against humanity. It is also considered a crime to attack a military target when it is clear that the likely incidental civilian injuries and deaths will be disproportionate to any likely military advantage to be gained as a result of the attack.

Consider the nature of the conflict between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is explicit in its genocidal intent, stating in its charter and in myriad declarations by its representatives that its goal is not only the annihilation of Israel but the slaughter of all Jews. It makes clear that it has zero interest in the establishment of a Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel.

Apologists for Hamas’s Gaza regime claim that Israel, by blocking open access to Gaza, has, in effect, created an open-air prison in which Gazans suffer constant deprivation and so the organization has the right to try to break the Israeli siege. But from the time that Israel pulled all its citizens and troops out of Gaza, in 2005, the Palestinian leadership in the territory has pursued rocket attacks into Israel, and those attacks only escalated after Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007. To the degree that Israel has limited access to Gaza, it has done so in response to these incessant bombardments and other assaults. In addition, its doing so is consistent with international law regarding states of belligerency and, for example, the United Nations has upheld the legitimacy of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

Moreover, the Israeli “siege” is typically overstated as totally cutting off Gaza from the wider world. In fact, one of Gaza’s borders is controlled by Egypt, not Israel. Further, huge amounts of goods enter Gaza on an almost daily basis from Israel and many Gazans cross back and forth between Gaza and Israel. Even during the current war, Israel continues to supply electricity and water to Gaza and continues to allow the daily passage of tons of goods, including food and medicine, into Hamas-controlled territory.

Also noteworthy is that Israel not only fully withdrew from the territory but left behind assets that could have contributed to Gaza establishing itself on a sound economic foundation. With the extensive financial support poured into Gaza by the international community, it could have become a Middle East Hong Kong or Singapore.

Apparently more than willing to pour gasoline on an already raging fire, an anti-Israeli Turkish relief organization, IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, is organizing a “Freedom Flotilla II” to bring “humanitarian” supplies to the Gaza strip. The IHH is the organization responsible for the last attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza in a self-inflicted disaster that saw nine Hamas-affiliated terrorists killed by Israeli commandos, who were attacked when they attempted to board the Mavi Marmara. IHH chairman Bulent Yildrim warns that this time, the flotilla will be accompanied by Turkish Navy vessels to “protect us from any potential attack.”

As of now, no firm date has been set for this latest effort to incite a violent confrontation with the Jewish State, but Yildrim insists that once the necessary permit from the authorities in Ankara is approved, the activists will set sail. Yildrim is inviting activists who participated in the 2010 trip to join the cause. The military component is based on a demand by Yildrim that the Turkish government provide protection for its own citizens.

The move reflects the increasing deterioration of Turkish-Israeli relations, already severely damaged by the 2010 attempt by the Freedom Flotilla I to challenge Israel’s right to block weaponry from entering the Gaza strip.

After the incident aboard the Mavi Marmara, a 2011 UN report by the Palmer Commission concluded Israel was within its legal rights to form the blockade. The report further noted that the naval blockade “was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law,” that “the flotilla acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade,” and that there were “serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH.”

And while the report also concluded that Israel’s boarding of the Mavi Marmara was “excessive and unreasonable,” it noted that “Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection.” The panel further recommended that those involved “should consult directly and make every effort to avoid a repetition of the incident.”

That isn’t likely to happen. After the incident and subsequent report, Turkey ejected Israel’s ambassador and recalled its own, but refrained from severing economic ties. But on July 19, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of “barbarism that surpasses Hitler,” regarding its military incursion into Gaza. He further insisted the Jewish State was guilty of using “disproportionate force” that has “derailed efforts to normalize Turkish-Israeli ties,” according to the Associated Press. Erdogan is running for the presidency in elections that will be held next month.

The media war between Israel and Hamas is a disproportionately unequal one. It’s unequal because Israel must maintain its credibility, while Hamas and its media allies never worry about their credibility.

In an instant messaging news cycle, Israel responds to accusations of atrocities with an investigation while Hamas and its Hamasbara allies in the media package together bloody photos from local stringers along with a narrative and turn it into an instant story.

By the time the Israeli investigation nails down the real story, as with the UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun, the Hamasbara is already moving on to the next atrocity.

Every Israeli statement is pored over and examined from every angle. A Tweet by an Israeli police spokesman was spun by BuzzFeed troll Sheera Frenkel into a claim that Hamas had not kidnapped and murdered the three Israeli boys. The story was then repackaged by New York Magazine for a post that had over 200,000 social media shares. The post was dishonest and untrue… but that didn’t matter.

Meanwhile Al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen participated in the attacks against Israel by accusing Haaretz’s Barak Ravid, who had revealed the Kerry ceasefire terms favorable to Hamas, of being a liar who was passing along false Israeli claims.

Rozen’s alternative draft, which appears to have come from Al Jazeera, did not differ significantly from the Israeli copy, but it didn’t stop her from using her Qatari source to attack Israel. Obama went on to reiterate many of the basic terms in the ceasefire proposal, but by then the narrative that the Israeli media was unfairly smearing Kerry was set.

These tactics, born out of the Twitter age and the complete collapse of journalistic ethics, aren’t just a defense of Islamic terrorism, but they also borrow some of the tactics of the terrorists they defend.

Hamasbara is less dependent on developed stories and more on Tweets and blog posts. Its practitioners are just activists with a media forum. Their smear campaigns depend on quick hit and run attacks. They bring a story into being out of thin air and move on to the next attack just as quickly.

There is something of the Hamas suicide bomber in their willingness to constantly self-destruct their reputations, but journalistic credentials don’t mean what they used to. Activist journalists help manufacture a story that is picked up by second-tier media blogs and mainstream media outlets.

Napoleon once ascribed his success to being able to see things as they were, and not as reflected in a fun house mirror. “The first qualification of a general-in-chief is to possess a cool head, so that things may appear to him in their true proportions and as they really are.”

In Washington’s eyes Gaza may be the biggest conflict the Middle East; but objectively it is the littlest. The numbers tell the story. Syrian president Bashar Assad went down on his knees at a mosque following what some have called the worst week in the Syrian civil war [1] ”amid reports of an unprecedented high death toll among his troops battling Islamic extremists.”

The military casualties came as fighting intensified in the past two weeks, with militants from the al-Qaida-breakaway Islamic State group seeking to eliminate opponents from all sides, dealing a series of setbacks for government forces and rival rebels alike … about 1,240 soldiers and other Assad loyalists have been killed in the past 10 days in northern Syria.

Other activists in Syria confirmed that past weeks have seen a record death toll. Syria’s three-year civil war has already killed more than 170,000 people, nearly a third of them civilians.

Nor should we forget Iraq was always a much bigger deal than Gaza and may be about to get worse. The Daily Beast’s Jamie Dettmer [2] tells readers to get set for the coming Blitz of Baghdad. “Analysts at the U.S.-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War, who have been plotting the locations and types of attacks in the recent flurry of blasts buffeting the Iraqi capital, have noted a clear pattern developing. They say it suggests the Islamic State is building up to something big and is no longer just focused on consolidating its grip and developing governance in the lands it now controls.”

The institute’s analysts predict the caliphate may be readying for an onslaught, possibly timed for the end of the holy month of Ramadan on Monday or during the Eid holiday celebrations this week. The aim would not be to seize Iraq’s capital, which has a very large Shia population with every incentive to fight to the death against an organization that slaughters Shia prisoner en masse. The purpose of the Islamic State offensive would be to sow mayhem and to keep Iraq’s state apparatus from recovering from its stunning defeats in June, when it lost control of Mosul, the second-largest city in the country. …

There has been a burst of attacks by bombers wearing suicide vests and also car blasts “along avenues of approach to the capital and also within Baghdad proper,” the institute notes in an intelligence update.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke some seldom-heard truths when he said Tuesday [2]: “What we’re seeing here with Hamas is another instance of Islamist extremism, violent extremism that has no resolvable grievance. Hamas is like ISIS, Hamas is like al Qaeda, Hamas is like Hezbollah, Hamas is like Boko Haram.” Indeed so; and Hamas shares those groups’ implacable hatred not just of Israel, but of all Jews – based on the Qur’an’s dictum that “you will surely find the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers to be the Jews” (5:82).

In practice, this generally manifests itself as just the opposite: in Muslims being the most intense of the people in animosity toward the Jews. That was clear last week in new calls for mass murder and genocide of Jews from supporters of Hamas and the Palestinian jihad – again making it difficult for supporters of the Palestinians to claim the moral high ground [3].
5. Qatari imam prays about the Jews: “Count them one by one, and kill them to the very last one.”

Sheikh Tareq Al-Hawwas delivered a Friday sermon [4] on Qatar TV on July 18, the day after the Israelis began their ground incursion into Gaza. “For the first time in the history of the abhorred country, the state of Israel,” the pious sheikh exulted, “sirens are heard around the clock and over three million people flee to their hideouts. Schools, governmental departments, and airports came to a halt. When have we ever heard of such things? This is the beginning of good things to come.” He concluded his peroration with an appeal to the deity:

Oh, Allah increase the pressure You exert upon the plundering Jews. Demonstrate upon them the miracles of Your might, for they are no match to You. Count them one by one, and kill them to the very last one. Do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, disperse them. Oh Lord, freeze the blood in their veins. Oh Allah, tear them asunder. Oh Allah, sow discord in their hearts. Oh Allah, do not let them prevail. Make an example of them for their allies. Oh Allah, bring down the planes of their air force, burn their infantry and sink the ships of their navy.

Benny Morris was first in his class- that class of Israeli/Jews who burnished their image in the left by libeling and bashing Israel. He opened the floodgates and deserves opprobrium rather than the polite rebuttal by Martin Kramer who wins this debate hands down…..rsk

The debate between Benny Morris and Martin Kramer over Israel’s wartime conduct enters its second round.

I have to admit that, prior to reading his essay, “What Happened at Lydda,” I had never read anything by Martin Kramer. But I had heard that he was a serious Middle East scholar, albeit of subjects far removed from the 1948 war. His essay, however, is imbued with clear political purpose—“Israel is defined by much of liberal opinion as an ‘occupier,’” Kramer writes at one point in an essay that ostensibly deals with July 1948—and thus smacks more of propaganda than of history (even though the minutiae of his criticism of Ari Shavit’s manipulation of texts and facts regarding one minor episode in the war—what happened at a mosque in Lydda on July 12, 1948—are illuminating, if not so much about the war as about Shavit).

In my response in Mosaic to Kramer’s essay, I argued that “disproportion” speaks “massacre.” Kramer has now replied to my argument in a manner disingenuous if not forthrightly mendacious. Yes, in contemporary warfare between advanced technological societies and Third World societies—the U.S. versus Iraq, for example, or Israel versus Hamas—the application of air power and sophisticated artillery by a Western power can lead to completely disproportionate losses on the part of ill-armed Arab ground forces, and these do not necessarily speak of massacre. But in the Israeli-Arab war of 1948, two or more relatively primitive armies came to grips. When, in a specific battlefield, one side was more powerful than the other, a “disproportion” in losses might arise. That happened, for example, in the successive battles between the Haganah/IDF and Jordan’s Arab Legion at Latrun in May-June 1948, where many more Israelis died than Jordanians due to the Legion’s efficient use of its mortars and 75-mm artillery batteries and to Israeli paucity in or misuse of heavy weaponry. But when the disproportion is 250:0 or 250:2, as occurred, according to contemporary IDF documents, between the IDF and the Lydda townspeople, some of them armed, on July 12 of the same year, then “battle” is surely not the name of the game; “massacre” is more like it.

To Kramer, this was a “battle with two sides.” And now, to mislead his readers, he says in his reply that there was indeed a “battle” between the Yiftah-brigade soldiers and the two or three Jordanian armored cars that had penetrated Lydda. But that is not at issue. Sure, there was an Israeli-Jordanian battle (or, more accurately, a skirmish, in which there were Israeli casualties) around noon on July 12. But the question is whether what transpired afterward, between the townspeople, some of whom sniped at the Israelis, and the Yiftah troops—an action that ended in 250 dead townspeople–was a battle. Given the vanishingly small number of Israeli losses, “battle” is a tendentious misnomer, Kramer’s sophistry and verbal acrobatics notwithstanding.

The question that routinely comes up regarding U.S. foreign policy these days is: What in the world were they thinking? The latest puzzlement is the weekend fiasco in which President Obama and John Kerry pressed a cease-fire that is likely to extend the war between Hamas and Israel.

As Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza enters its third week, the goal of America’s foremost ally in the region is clear. It must degrade Hamas as a military and political force to the greatest extent possible.

That means destroying the rockets the terror group hasn’t yet fired at Israel and especially collapsing the network of tunnels used for smuggling weapons and infiltrating into Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be mindful of Palestinian civilian casualties and maintaining domestic and international support, but a victory requires achieving these strategic goals.

The irony is that Israel’s immediate Arab neighbors privately want it to succeed. Jordan wants no part of a Palestinian state run by Hamas, and neither do the Saudis or Egypt’s military government. The Fatah Palestinian faction that runs the West Bank also wants Hamas to emerge weaker. Surely the White House knows this.

Yet over the weekend Secretary of State Kerry blundered into the conflict promoting a cease-fire floated by Turkey and Qatar that was close to the terms demanded by Hamas. The U.S. hasn’t released the details, but Israel’s press has published what it says is a one-page summary. The document called on Israel to negotiate with “Palestinian factions,” meaning direct talks with Hamas, as well as an end to Israel’s military campaign while giving Hamas concessions on border crossings and outside payments. In short, it would have ended the war while leaving Hamas in a position to rebuild its terror economy.

Mr. Obama didn’t endorse the Kerry plan per se. But in a readout of his Sunday phone call to Mr. Netanyahu, the White House said in a statement that, “Building on Secretary Kerry’s efforts, the President made clear the strategic imperative of instituting an immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire that ends hostilities now” and leads to a deal based on the cease-fire in November 2012. That’s the one that let Hamas rearm.

Israel’s leaders said they were escalating the military campaign in Gaza and told the country to prepare for a prolonged operation, defying international demands for an immediate cease-fire after Hamas militants broke a Muslim holiday lull.

The military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said Israel’s assault on Gaza’s Hamas rulers was being “intensified” after three weeks of fighting that has cost more than 1,100 lives.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a televised address, gave no sign the military would go beyond its stated goals—degrading Hamas’s rocket arsenal and finding and destroying a network of cross-border tunnels that fighters use to infiltrate Israel. The military needs about another week to accomplish that, officials said.

“We will not finish the mission, we will not finish the operation, without neutralizing the tunnels, which have the sole purpose of annihilating our citizens and killing our children,” the prime minister said. He told Israelis to brace for a prolonged fight.

As he spoke, the military sent messages instructing thousands of Palestinians living on the outskirts of Gaza City to leave their homes and take shelter in the city center—an apparent prelude to an assault on suspected Hamas positions in civilian neighborhoods.

Just before midnight, missiles struck several buildings in Gaza City, some of the heaviest bombardment since the assault began three weeks ago. Flares lit the moonless sky, followed by strikes that rattled and broke windows several blocks away. Acrid smoke hung over the city that houses many of Gaza’s municipal buildings and its commercial center.

Later, flares lighted up the midnight sky over Gaza City, accompanied by repeated explosions that rattled windows.

There had been a brief lull in fighting from Sunday afternoon as Israel eased up on strikes for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which began on Monday.

Nicholas Casey and Tamer El-Ghobashy in Gaza City and Joshua Mitnick in Tel Aviv

Israeli forces pounded Hamas symbols of control and the Gaza Strip’s only power plant Tuesday in their heaviest bombardment of a 3-week offensive in Gaza, defying international demands for an immediate cease-fire after Hamas militants broke a Muslim holiday lull.

The military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said the assault on Gaza’s Hamas rulers, which has cost more than 1,100 lives, was being “intensified.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis late Monday to brace for a long fight.

In a televised address, Mr. Netanyahu had given no sign that the military would go beyond its stated goals-degrading Hamas’s rocket arsenal and finding and destroying a network of cross-border tunnels that fighters use to infiltrate Israel. The military needs about another week to accomplish that, officials said.

But the overnight strikes by Israeli aircraft, tanks and navy gunboats on dozens of targets pointed to a wider campaign.

They damaged the home of the top Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, along with government offices and the headquarters of the Hamas broadcast outlets, Al-Aqsa TV and Al-Aqsa Radio. The Israeli military said it hit the broadcast center to silence Hamas propaganda and messages to its operatives. The TV station continued to broadcast but the radio went silent.