Group items tagged

On Monday, Israel's chief of staff defended his troops against a rising tide of criticism. "I tell you that this is a moral and ideological army," Lt-Gen Gabi Ashkenazi said in a speech to new recruits. "I have no doubt that exceptional events will be dealt with. We took every measure possible to reduce harm to the innocent [in Gaza]."

The report cited two alleged incidents from January 3. In one, it said, after a tank round struck near a house, a father and his two sons -- both younger than 11 -- emerged to look at the damage. "As they exited their home, IDF soldiers shot and killed them (at the entrance to their house), with the daughter witnessing," the report said. In the second, it said, "Israeli soldiers entered a family house in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Standing at the doorstep, they asked the male head of the household to come out and shot him dead, without warning, while he was holding his ID, hands raised up in the air, and then started to fire indiscriminately and without warning into the room where the rest of the family was huddled together. "The eldest son was shouting in vain the word 'Children' in Hebrew to warn the soldiers. The shooting did not stop until everyone was lying on the floor. The mother and four of the brothers, aged 2-12 years, had been wounded, one of them, aged 4, fatally."

The alleged instances occurred during Operation Cast Lead, which was launched December 27 to halt rocket attacks into southern Israel from Gaza and ended January 17 with a cease-fire. The U.N. report called the response by Israel disproportionate. Of the 1,453 people estimated killed in the conflict, 1,440 were Palestinian, including 431 children and 114 women, the report said. The 13 Israelis killed included three civilians and six soldiers killed by Hamas, and four soldiers killed by friendly fire, it said.

The report said the Israeli operation resulted in "a dramatic deterioration of the living conditions of the civilian population." It cited "targeted and indiscriminate" attacks on hospitals and clinics, water and sewage treatment facilities, government buildings, utilities and farming and said the offensive "intensified the already catastrophic humanitarian situation of the Palestinian people." It said Israeli strikes damaged more than 200 schools and left more than 70,000 people homeless. "There are strong and credible reports of war crimes and other violations of international norms," it said, adding that many observers have said war crimes investigations should be undertaken.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, called the report "another example of the one-sided and unfair attitude of the rapporteur of the Human Rights Council, a council that has been criticized by current and previous secretaries-general for its unbalanced attitudes toward Israel." He added, "The negative fixation on Israel by the council has done a disservice to the issue of human rights internationally as has been attested to by the leading NGO's [nongovernmental organizations] on human rights."

Another report issued Monday also was critical of the IDF. The report from Physicians for Human Rights said the Gaza incursion violated IDF's own code of ethics. The report by the medical group, which shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, cited instances where it said IDF forces did not evacuate injured civilians for days and prevented Palestinian teams from reaching the wounded, and said some of them died as a result. It said 16 Palestinian medical personnel were killed by IDF fire and 25 were wounded during the IDF operation, and accused the IDF of attacking 34 medical centers in violation of the IDF's own "ethical code for fighting terror." In response, the IDF accused Hamas of having used medical vehicles, facilities and uniforms to conceal its members' activity. "Hamas used ambulances to 'rescue' terror activists from the battlefield and used hospitals and medical facilities as hiding places," the Israelis said in a written statement. "Despite this, throughout the fighting, IDF forces were instructed to avoid firing at ambulances, even if they were being used by armed fighters. They were instructed only to shoot if there was fire towards our forces emanating from the direction of the ambulance." Regarding the reported delays in casualty evacuations, "there existed real difficulties in evacuating the injured, due to the roadblocks, booby-trapped roads and dirt mounds placed by the Hamas as well as the considerable damage to the infrastructure," the statement said.

he Israeli daily Haaretz newspaper reported that Israeli soldiers who had finished basic training ordered the shirts, one of which showed a pregnant Arab in the crosshairs of a gun sight with a caption reading "1 Shot 2 Kills." Another showing a small child in a gun's sight was captioned, "The smaller they are, the harder it is." "The examples presented by The Haaretz reporter are not in accordance with IDF values and are simply tasteless," the Israeli military said in a written statement. "This type of humor is unbecoming and should be condemned."

Israeli soldiers said last week that Palestinian civilians were killed and Palestinian property intentionally destroyed during Israel's military campaign in Gaza, according to Haaretz. The IDF has said it is investigating the claims, but its top general expressed skepticism Monday. "I don't believe that soldiers serving in the IDF hurt civilians in cold blood, but we shall wait for the results of the investigation," Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi, the chief of staff, said in a speech. "I tell you that this is a moral and ideological army." He blamed Hamas for choosing "to fight in heavily populated areas. "It (was) a complex atmosphere that includes civilians and we took every measure possible to reduce harm of the innocent," he said, according to an IDF statement.

The Mullen-Ashkenazi axis, like similar axes between heads of the two countries' intelligence communities, allows the Americans to sense the genuine atmosphere beneath the public propaganda disseminated in Israel and to understand the extent to which Israel is really concerned about the Iranian nuclear threat. It also affords them the opportunity to reassure, to delay and, at the very least, to walk the hidden line between the desire not to officially know in advance, in order to safeguard the ability to shrug off responsibility, and the need not to be surprised.

Make no mistake about the Obama administration, when it comes to Iran: Its policy differs from that of the Bush administration only in style, not in content. Its officials express themselves in positive terms, cloaked in an expression of conciliation, as opposed to the angry face worn by president George W. Bush - but the conclusions are similar, as are the results. Gary Samore, who Jones put in charge of coordinating the issue of weapons of mass destruction, said often, before his appointment, including during a speech at the Herzliya Conference in 2007, organized by Uzi Arad (today Benjamin Netanyahu's national security advisor), that the Iranians will continue their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons and that economic and diplomatic pressure will not help.

Ashton Carter, recently nominated by the president to be under secretary of defense for acquistion, technology and logistics, offered a similar analysis for the Bush administration, when he outlined three alternatives to confronting Iran. Plan B3, the military option, also entailed a possible bombing of Iranian oil installations, which are not protected and concealed like components of the nuclear infrastructure. The prevailing balance of power within the Obama administration tends to favor attacking Iran's nuclear installations, or to tolerate an Israeli attack. A prominent opponent of using military force against Iran, Charles Freeman, who had been slated to head the U.S. National Intelligence Council, was dropped under pressure of Israel's American supporters.

Obama will wait - not only for Iranian elections, scheduled for June (and those in Lebanon, that same month), but also for September's elections in Germany, and for Britons to vote at more or less the same time (elections have yet to be scheduled), in order to know who will stand by his side in the trenches. In that way 2009 will pass without a decision, but not all of 2010, because come that November, Congressional elections will be held, immediately after which the Democrats will begin organizing Obama's reelection campaign. The summer of 2010 will be critical, because by then the evacuation of most of the American forces from Iraq will be completed and fewer exposed targets will remain for Iranian revenge attacks.

The development of the Iron Dome system for intercepting Katyusha rockets, whose first battery will protect the environs north of the Gaza Strip (Ashkelon, Sderot), is expected to be completed by the summer of 2010. That will make it difficult for Hamas to open another front to harass the IDF on Iran's behalf. In the coming months, the tests of the Arrow missile defense system will continue, in a scenario that simulates an attack by a long-distance Iranian missile. The tests will be carried out in cooperation with American systems, including the large radar facility at the Nevatim air base. Preparations for defence against a radioactive attack will also improve, at an event to be staged at either an Israeli or an American port, as will preparations for a plague of smallpox, in a joint exercise involving Israel and one of NATO's important European member states.

In the Pentagon's most recent report about the strengthening of China, Israel receives a pat on the back, of the kind given to a well-behaved child: It has been cured of the habit of providing air-to-ground Harpy missiles to China, which extend the Chinese air force's operational range, and has also enforced stricter export supervision. The Americans are displaying a false naivete: Nothing has changed except for two offices having been moved around administratively. The decision to launch a military operation against Iran, particularly using American-made planes (such as the F-16, whose supply was suspended after Israel's 1981 attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor), will have to be preceded by feelers to discern where Obama stands exactly on the continuum between approval and opposition. Apparently Israel wants Obama to emerge sufficiently strengthened from this week's NATO summit, but still too weak to say no to Israel.