It's tough enough to fight a war. It's even tougher when you're up against cowardly soldiers not in uniform who hide behind civilians. And things get absurd when after the war, you fear going to certain countries because you might get arrested for war crimes. The IDF has met a new enemy: the foreign courts, emboldened by the Goldstone report. In this
article in Haaretz, Shahar Ilan explains how this new development can demoralize the troops and hurt Israel's ability to defend itself.
Operation Cast Lead was a resounding military success. It put a stop to the Qassam rocket fire in the south and we sustained few casualties. Yet even this success does not relieve the commanders of the need to go into battle with a lawyer in tow.
There is no way to wage combat in Gaza without harming the civilian population, and it is obvious that the IDF did much to avoid this. We are essentially telling our commanders: Your war is never over, and even if your life was saved, your career is in danger. No deed geared toward Israel's defense will go unpunished.
IDF officers and their charges are not the only ones whose faces we are spitting in by entertaining the very idea of establishing a commission of inquiry. What message are we sending to the residents of the south? That we accept the claim that firing thousands of Qassam rockets on their heads is not a war crime, but our operation is?
One needs to be blind not to recognize the fact that the world is judging us by a double standard. It does not change the fact that the world is stronger, and sometimes we need to put our heads down and play their game.
But there also comes a time when we need to say "enough is enough." If the officers who led Operation Cast Lead end up paying for it with their careers, or even if they do not pay but their appearances before a commission of inquiry become nightmarish, this will be the real crime.
1 comment:
Good post! Above you quote Ilan saying . . .
"It does not change the fact that the world is stronger, and sometimes we need to put our heads down and play their game."
Yet in the next breath he says . . .
"But there also comes a time when we need to say "enough is enough."
What's "enough"? Since he has mentioned 'enough' twice, I ask twice: What's "enough"? I'll tell you what's enough. It's "putting our heads down" and playing their game. There was enough of that the first time ever it was done.
And we all know it. That's flab; that's weakness; the whole world gets a scent of that, and that alone is what makes the world "stronger".
But stronger in what? The stench of bully sweat? What in the world was ever stronger than Israel in 1948 and 1967? I'll tell you: nothing, ever! What was ever stronger than Israel at Entebbe? Nothing. EVER. What ever was stronger than Israel, when without force of alliance from anywhere in the world, Israel stood up to become Israel, once in '48, and TWICE, in 1967, against odds of a heel dragging LBJ and the whole Soviet world with every Arab nation under shelter of those bloody red arms, tanks, and jets?
Nothing is weaker than the rest of the world when one people in it stands up strong enough to be itself in defiance of all the bullying in the world.
Nothing can be a greater slap in the face to those whose "game" you condescend to be playing, than to play for them the part thier prejudice and ignorance would cast you in.
That's not what they want! All any man asks of another is that he should put his head up and declare who he is, what he wants, what he sees to be rightly coming to him whether they like it or not. They may not like it, till you've given them the chance to get used to it, but at least they will not hate and despise you for playing the imposter.
It is, above all things, this Jewish self-betrayal, this putting down of the head and playing the game that has kept forever the calumney coming against Jews and Israel. And of all people, wouldn't you think Israel should have learned that lesson by now?
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JM
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