Explaining Palestinian Politics: When Even the Moderates Talk Like Extremists, No Peace Deal is Possible.

by Barry Rubin

U.S. and European policymakers (not to mention journalists and academics) often talk as if the Palestinian issue is the most important aspect of their. foreign policies, the Middle East, and even the whole world. Yet as recent events show, the nature of Palestinian politics and how they ensure there can be no peace are either misunderstood or not even seriously examined at all.

Fatah controls the PLO, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and about a half-dozen militias. If there is going to be Israel-Palestinian peace, Fatah is going to have to make it. Fatah is also a client of the United States which provides (directly or through international fund-raising efforts) Fatah’s money. It trains Fatah’s soldiers and provides diplomatic backing.

If there is a genuine moderate in Fatah’s higher levels it is Ahmad Qurie, best known as Abu Ala. He has no organized political base but is well-known and did get over 30 percent of the delegates’ support in the Fatah Central Committee election.

During the 1990s’ peace process, Abu Ala was one of the main Palestinian negotiators. Israelis who worked with him felt he wanted negotiations to succeed. At one point, when things were going well, he astonished fellow negotiators by breaking into a little dance of joy.

But what happened when Qurie lost in the recent election by a vote or two? He immediately charged that Israel rigged the election to install those who would “rubber stamp” its terms. Proposing compromises, much less a deal, with Israel, would prove any Palestinian leader is a traitor.

With such a political culture, how could Fatah ever make a deal with Israel?

Here’s another link in this chain. One of the main targets of Abu Ala’s wrath is Muhammad Dahlan. He was once Yasir Arafat’s protégé, the only West Banker included in the higher command of the first intifada in Tunis.

But he later quarreled with Arafat, angry at the leader’s building up of the Islamist Hamas to fight against Israel. Dahlan correctly understood that it was only a matter of time until Hamas turned against Fatah and competed with it for power. At one point, Arafat reportedly slapped Dahlan in front of several colleagues, an ultimate insult.

Dahlan was the PA’s commander of Preventive Security in the Gaza Strip, meaning it was his job to defeat Hamas there. After Arafat’s death, he had more of a free hand. He was then the national security advisor of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas. He failed miserably to stop Hamas from taking over the Gaza Strip. If anyone bears responsibility for Fatah’s humiliating defeat there, it’s Dahlan.

This has not prevented him, however, from remaining at the very top of Fatah’s politics. We are now told that this man, who has been a key player in Fatah for 20 years and a protégé of its last two leaders, is a fresh face from the younger generation.

Dahlan is a gunslinger, a tough militia leader. Like Abu Ala, however, he is one of the more pragmatic people in Fatah. Israelis can talk to him; he has few illusions that Fatah can win a military victory over Israel. He is not a bloodthirsty extremist, at least by Palestinian standards.

Recently, though, he proclaimed that Fatah has never and will never recognized Israel. In a plea to his Hamas enemies, he made it clear that Fatah would never ask Hamas to accept Israel’s existence as a condition for unity. In short, he is inviting Hamas to fight Israel alongside Fatah. Does Dahlan want a bloodbath? No. But he realizes that if he is going to have political ambitions he is going to have to bash Israel from a militant standpoint.

These two men—Abu Ala and Dahlan—are among the most moderate in Fatah. In their heads, they probably know that a compromise two-state solution is the best way forward for the Palestinians. But they will never have a chance to implement such a policy for two reasons.

First, the movement will always choose a much more hardline leadership—and I don’t necessarily mean as the nominal front man but as the group’s and the West Bank’s real rulers. Already, it is clear that the next leader of Fatah, the PLO, and the PA is Muhammad Ghaneim a man who—and this is no joke—is far more hardline tactically than Arafat. Ghaneim has still not even accepted the 1993 Oslo agreement which Arafat signed and which provides the basis not only for the peace process but for the PA itself.

Second, they know that whatever their personal views they must out-militant everyone else, insisting that there can be no concessions to Israel and that the Palestinians must maintain their demands inflexibly, glorify violence, while competing with Hamas in their inflexibility and radical rhetoric.

None of this appears in the Western media, governments, NGOs, and “experts,” groups which generally merely pronounce Fatah as moderate, flexible, ready for peace—indeed as more so than Israel! Yet there is not going to be any peace and the factors outlined above explain why.

If men like Abu Ala and Dahlan had their way--one might add PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad here--at least the status quo could be maintained and improved on. But there is real evidence that the movement might be swinging in an even more radical direction. Abu Ala and Dahlan will go along with this and even feed the fire in order to promote their careers. As a result, the Israel-Palestinian conflict will continue for decades. And if you don’t look at how Palestinian politics work and who leads them you will never ever understand why.

 

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs..

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Fatah's Message.

 

by: Caroline B. Glick

A central pillar of the Obama administration's Middle East policy paradigm was shattered at the Fatah conference in Bethlehem - but don't expect the White House to notice.

At the conference, Fatah's supposedly feuding old guard and young guard were united in their refusal to reach an accommodation with Israel. Both old and young endorsed the use of terrorism against Israel. Both embraced the Aksa Martyrs Brigades terror group as a full-fledged Fatah organization.

Both demanded that all Jews be expelled from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem ahead of the establishment of a Jew-free Palestinian state.

Both claimed that any settlement with Israel be preceded by an Israeli withdrawal to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and by Israel's destruction as a Jewish state through its acceptance of millions of foreign-born, hostile Arabs as immigrants within its truncated borders.

Both demanded that all terrorists be released from Israeli prisons as a precondition for "peace" talks with Israel.

Both accused Israel of murdering Yasser Arafat.

Both approved building a strategic alliance with Iran.

In staking out these extremist positions, both Fatah's old guard and its younger generation of leaders demonstrated that Fatah's goal today is the same as it has been since the its founding in 1959: Liberating Palestine (from the river to the sea) by wiping Israel off the map.

Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas's decision to remove both his own mask and that of his organization should cause the Netanyahu government to reassess its current policies toward the group. For the past four months, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government have quietly barred all Jewish construction in eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem neighborhoods, as well as in Judea and Samaria. The government's unofficial policy has been implemented in the hopes of pleasing the Obama administration, which argues that by barring Jewish building, Israel will encourage the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority to moderate its policies and so engender an atmosphere conducive to a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. The Fatah conference put paid to that fiction.

Fatah's message to the Netanyahu government is important. But even more important is the message it conveys to the Obama administration. For Netanyahu, the Fatah gathering bore out his prior assessment that the group is a wolf in sheep's clothing. For US President Barack Obama, the message of the Fatah conclave was that his administration's assumptions not only about Fatah, but about terrorists and terror-supporting regimes in general are completely wrong.

For the Obama administration, Fatah was supposed to be the poster child for moderate terrorists. Fatah was supposed to be the prototype of the noble terrorist organization that really just wants respect. It was supposed to be the group that proved the central contention of the Obama White House's strategy for dealing with terror, namely, that all terrorists want is to be appeased.

But over the past week in Bethlehem, Fatah's leaders said they will not be appeased. To the international community whose billions of dollars in aid money and boundless goodwill and political support they have pocketed over the past decade and a half they sent a clear message. They remain an implacable terror group devoted to the physical annihilation of Israel.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration is already making clear that it is incapable of accepting this basic truth. As Abbas and his cronies were exposing their true nature in Bethlehem, Obama's counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, was giving a speech in Washington where he demonstrated the administration's ideological inflexibility.

Speaking before the Center for Strategic and International Studies last Thursday, Brennan declared that appeasing terrorists and terror-supporting regimes and societies by bowing to their political demands is the central plank of the administration's counterterror strategy. As he put it, "Even as we condemn and oppose the illegitimate tactics used by terrorists, we need to acknowledge and address the legitimate needs and grievances of ordinary people those terrorists claim to represent."

To this end, Brennan stressed that for the Obama administration, the now-discredited Fatah model of conferring political legitimacy and funding on terrorists in a bid to transform them into good citizens must be implemented for every terror group in the world except al-Qaida. In furtherance of this goal, the US government will no longer refer to America's fight against terror as a "war on terror" and it will no longer refer to the enemy it fights as "jihadists" or the cause for which these "violent extremists" fight a "jihad."

As Brennan explained it, referring to terrorists as terrorists is unacceptable because doing so sets the US against terror-supporting regimes that the Obama administration believes are all amenable to appeasement. And referring to Islamic terrorists as jihadists gives the jihadists the "right" to define what jihad is. Since the Obama administration perceives itself as a greater authority on Islamic law and tradition than the likes of Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, Ayatollah Khomeini, Khaled Mashaal and their fellow jihadists worldwide, Brennan unhesitatingly asserted that "'Jihad'... means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal."

Building on the false Fatah model of appeasable terrorists, Brennan indicated that the Obama administration believes that Hizbullah is well on its way to becoming a respectable political actor. As he sees it, simply by participating in Lebanon's political process, the Iranian proxy has earned the right to be viewed as a legitimate political force. Brennan cited the fact that in addition to active terrorist elements, Hizbullah members today include "members of parliament, in the cabinet; [and] there are lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the Hizbullah organization" as a reason to celebrate the group. He further claimed that Hizbullah members who are not actively involved in terrorism "are in fact renouncing that type of terrorism and violence and are trying to participate in the political process in a very legitimate fashion."

As The Jerusalem Post's Barry Rubin argued on his Web site, The Rubin Report, Brennan's assessment of Hizbullah is not merely factually wrong. It also exposes a deep misunderstanding of why Hizbullah entered the Lebanese political fray - and why Hamas entered the Palestinian political fray - in the first place. Brennan's analysis is factually wrong because at no point has any Hizbullah member ever condemned or in any way criticized its paramilitary or terror cadres. To the contrary, Hizbullah's nonmilitary personnel have gone on record repeatedly praising their terror brethren and have expressed disappointment that they are not among the movement's fighters.

Like Hamas - which Brennan in the past has expressed support for recognizing - Hizbullah entered Lebanese politics with the intention of taking over the country. It wishes to control Lebanon both to protect its military forces, and to advance its jihadist aim of spreading the Iranian revolution and destroying Israel. Like Hamas, Hizbullah's political empowerment has not moderated it. It has strengthened its military arm and made it politically impossible for its domestic rivals to oppose its war against Israel, its ties to Iran and Syria and its independent military force.

Unfortunately, as Brennan made clear last Thursday, the Obama administration is intellectually wed to the notion that terrorists like Hassan Nasrallah, and terror-supporting regimes like Bashar Assad's Syria and his overlords in Iran just want to be accepted by the West. They cannot accept any evidence to the contrary.

This week the Obama administration dispatched senior military officials to Damascus for yet another round of friendly talks with the Iranian satellite. According to media citations of Pentagon and State Department officials, the administration is looking to cut a deal where in exchange for Syrian agreement to curtail its support for jihadists in Iraq, the US will put pressure on Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria.

As for Iran, the administration has officially given the mullahs until next month to decide whether they are interested in negotiating a deal with the US regarding their nuclear program. Although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her colleagues in the administration are beginning to acknowledge that Iran will not meet their deadline, the administration has no Plan B.

The White House continues to oppose placing additional sanctions on Iran. State Department officials said this week that they fear that additional sanctions - including widely supported Congressional bills that would limit refined petroleum imports to Iran - would cause the Iranian public to rally around the regime. The fact that the Iranian public is in large part now begging Western countries to reject the legitimacy of the regime has made no impact on the Obama administration. Indeed, top US officials are unanimous in their willingness to accept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the legitimate president of Iran. Appeasement remains the only option the administration is willing to consider.

The Obama administration's unswerving efforts to accommodate terrorists and terror-supporting regimes wherever they are to be found demonstrates that for the administration, appeasement is not a tactic for achieving US policy aims. Appeasing terrorists and regimes that support them is the aim of US policy.

All of this makes clear that in spite of its reasonable desire to reach a deal with the Obama White House, the Netanyahu government must abandon any plans to do so. The Post reported this week that the government is now negotiating a six-month extension of its unofficial ban on Jewish construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria with US officials. These negotiations must be ended immediately.

Indeed, the proper response to the Fatah conference is for the government to announce that it is approving all building requests it has held up for the past four months. It should also declare that from now on it will treat all requests for building permits in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem in the same manner that it treats such requests from everywhere else in the country.

The Obama administration's devotion to appeasement shows that even if it wished to reward Israel in some way for going along with a construction freeze, it has nothing to offer. The only play in its game book is further concessions to terrorists and regimes that sponsor them. A settlement freeze will lead to a demand to accept a Lebanese "unity" government where Hizbullah reigns supreme, or a Palestinian "unity" government that paves the way for Hamas's international legitimization. An Israeli willingness to discriminate against Jews in Jerusalem will lead to a further demand that Israel cede the Golan Heights to Damascus, and accept Iran as a nuclear power.

For the Obama administration there is but one way of looking at terrorists: Just as Fatah can be appeased, so the mullahs can be accommodated.

Fatah's message that it will not be appeased is a message the Obama administration will never receive.

 

Caroline B. Glick
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Evangelicals: An appreciation.

 

by Isi Leibler

A prominent American Jewish leader recently told me that the passionate standing ovation he received after addressing 4,000 participants at John Hagee's Christians United for Israel rally in Washington was reminiscent of the fervent Zionist gatherings he attended as a youngster. The two-day Evangelical Christian parley was designed to express support for Israel, receive updates on the current challenges facing the Jewish state and lobby congressmen in support of Israel. They heard addresses from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu via satellite, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Ambassador Michael Oren, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Presidents' Conference and others.

At a time when much of global public opinion views Israel through the distorted lenses of Arab and anti-Semitic defamation, millions of Evangelicals have emerged as our most devoted supporters.

The evolution of this relationship is extraordinary and defies logic. It is only over the past three decades that support for Israel assumed such a high priority among this Christian denomination, which is rapidly expanding at a time when other churches are in dramatic decline.

Until recently, most Jews regarded Evangelicals as zealots obsessed with a desire to convert everyone. They also believed that their philo-Semitism was not "genuine" because it was based on an eschatology which predicted that the second coming of the messiah would only come after the Jewish people had returned to Israel and brought about the end of days.

In addition, the strongly liberal American Jewish community, obsessed with separation of church and state, gay rights and abortion, regarded Evangelicals as dangerous right-wing extremists and until recently were complaining that politicians like Netanyahu, who addressed their gatherings, embarrassed them.

YET DESPITE this hostility, the Evangelicals continued to upgrade support for Israel, to the point where it is now a central feature of their world outlook.

As though divine providence had intervened, the change took place precisely when liberals, the traditional supporters of the Jews, embraced postmodernism and began turning against Israel, which was no longer an underdog. Alas, today, many liberals engage in campaigns demonizing and delegitimizing the Jewish state.

Evangelical support for Israel is not matched by other Christian denominations. Many Protestant churches have in fact transformed their antipathy toward Israel into hatred. The Catholic Church made enormous progress identifying the evil of anti-Semitism, but due to a combination of realpolitik and an unwillingness to swallow the bitter theological pill of recognizing Jewish statehood, it is still far from evenhanded in relation to the Arab-Israel conflict.

The truth is that Evangelicals are no more monolithic than Jews. They do include fringe groups who are fanatics, believers in the apocalyptic end of the Jewish people, missionaries and even anti-Semites. But the vast majority are God-fearing people who pray for the welfare of Israel and share an unconditional love for Jews as God's chosen people.

The principal reason for Evangelical support is that unlike other Christian groups, they reject replacement theology, which teaches that God forsook the Jews for having rejected Jesus. They respect Judaism as the foundation of Christianity and believe that the Jews will always remain God's chosen people. They believe that the Jewish claim to Israel is based on the biblical promise from God. That may embarrass secular Jews, but for traditional Jews it remains the core of their relationship with the Holy Land.

Evangelicals also believe that when God told Abraham that those who bless the "Children of Israel" will also be blessed (Genesis 12:3) this meant that God would bless Christians who love the Jewish people and support the State of Israel. They also believe that the ingathering of the Jews will precede the return of the messiah, and quote Isaiah 60:14 saying: "The sons of your oppressors will come bowing before you" as a prophecy that righteous gentiles can partake in this process.

These feelings nurtured the early 19th century Christian Zionists and subsequently motivated people like Lord Balfour, who authored the Balfour Declaration; Orde Wingate, who helped create the Hagana; Rev John Stanley Grauel, the hero on board the Exodus, who disclosed what happened in a firsthand report which had a crucial impact on the UN Special Committee on Palestine; writers like Pierre van Paassen, who promoted the Zionist cause; and many others.

EVANGELICALS' SUPPORT for the Jewish state today manifests itself primarily by advocacy for Israel. However, they insist that they will never publicly "pressure or oppose policies adopted by Israel's democratically elected government."

Evangelical political clout with the Democratic administration is considerably weaker than it was under president George W. Bush. Nevertheless, with more than 60 million adherents, they still represent one of the most powerful political forces in the United States. They recently formed a Christian counterpart to AIPAC to lobby congressmen and canvass against legislation hostile to Israel.

Many rank-and-file church-goers donate generously to projects designed to strengthen Israel. For example, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews initiated by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein today represents the largest single donor to the Jewish Agency and was among those who contributed seed money to launch Nefesh B'Nefesh.

The 50 dedicated representatives of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, which has branches in 80 nations, spearhead the noble Christian Zionist presence in the Holy Land. They publish and broadcast information about Israel to the world. From generous contributions from members, they fund substantial social programs including assistance to integrate immigrants and support for former Gush Katif residents. They actively promote missions to Israel and host major pilgrim tours. They now represent one of the most dynamic sources of Israeli tourism.

Although most Israelis and Jews now appreciate the enormous value of Evangelical support, some liberal Jews continue to criticize the relationship, and ill-informed Orthodox Jews persist in mistakenly perceiving all Evangelicals as missionaries. It is axiomatic that we differ with Evangelicals over theology. But an alliance based on specific goals does not oblige both parties to adopt each other's approach on broader issues.

On Israel-related issues, a pragmatic cooperation is not a matter of creed but of political common sense. Besides, Evangelical support has never been conditional on a quid pro quo. It is thus surely unbecoming for us to remain passive while misguided Jews behave in a churlish manner to our greatest supporters.

On a personal level, I am proud to be associated with Evangelicals on various projects to promote Israel. I also enjoy being able to discuss political issues with people who still recognize the existence of good and evil instead of dealing with mind-numbing postmodernism and the moral equivalency that one continuously encounters with confused liberals.

The alliance with the Evangelicals represents one of the few bright lights in an otherwise dismal political environment. Indeed, were there more Evangelicals in Protestant/Catholic Europe, the prevailing hostility against Israel in that region might yet be substantially modified.

As an observant Jew, I appreciate their support and hope that they will be blessed for their friendship.

 

Isi Leibler
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

The 14 Lies Blocking Peace in the Middle East.

 

by: Steven Plaut

If a Martian were suddenly to land on earth and start listening to and reading the mainstream media, he would form the impression that the entire Middle East conflict were due to Israel building some settlements in land that much of the world thinks should become a Palestinian state. A near-consensus exists among the governments of the world and among media writers that peace has yet to break out in the Middle East because of three principle reasons. The first is that the Jews and the Arabs have been unable to agree about whether there should be a Palestinian state. The second is because Israel has obstinately refused to withdraw its troops from (so-called) “occupied Arab” lands. The third is because Israel behaves cruelly towards the Palestinians.   

The Martian could easily carry these beliefs back to its home planet, as long as it did not bother to learn the background and the history of the Middle East conflict. Those three reasons cannot survive an antibiotic of familiarity with Middle East history.   

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seem to think the idea of Palestinian statehood is the most wonderful idea to come along since the Thirteenth Amendment. And almost all world politicians, along with the Israeli Left, insist that all Israeli settlements must be removed from the West Bank because they serve as the main obstacle to peace. The reality is that the Middle East conflict has very little to do with debate over Palestinian statehood and even less to do with Israeli “settlements.” In fact Israel has agreed in principle, somewhat foolishly, to the erection of such a Palestinian state, at least subject to some security conditions and other concessions from the Palestinians -- like recognizing Israel’s right to exist. As it turns out, even so-called “moderate” Palestinians reject any such idea.   

Meanwhile debate about the Middle East conflict is based on an incredible absence of historic information and on a series of stylish misconceptions about Middle East history. The anti-Israel Lobby, which grows by the day in its maliciousness and anti-Semitism, counts on the ignorance of much of the public concerning how the Middle East got to where it is.  

Here are just a handful of popular misconceptions and their antidotes:  

1. Falsehood: Israel was erected on land that belonged to Palestinian Arabs.   

Truth: Before Israel was created its territory never belonged to Palestinian Arabs and had not been ruled by any Arabs at all since the Middle Ages. It had been a Turkish province for centuries until it was captured by Britain during World War I. The League of Nations awarded governance of “Palestine” to Britain at the end of the war in exchange for its commitment to turn the area into a Jewish homeland. The lands on which Jewish immigrants settled before Israel was created were purchased by Jews at above-market prices and in most cases had no Arabs living on them. Virtually no Arabs were evicted.   

2. Falsehood:  The Jews came to Palestine as foreigners and aliens whereas the Palestinians were the indigenous people of the territory.  

Truth:  Jews lived in “Palestine,” which is the Land of Israel or "Eretz Yisroel," continuously from the time of the Bible. Most families of “Palestinians” migrated into “Palestine,” during the same period as the Zionist waves of immigration, starting in the second half of the 19^th century. The largest ethnic group in the country at the time was the Turks. The “Palestinian Arabs” in 1948 were primarily families of migrants from Lebanon and Syria. Ironically, they were motivated to become “Palestinians” in the first place thanks to the Zionist movement, which brought capital and labor into “Palestine” and improved living conditions there. Huge numbers of the names of “Palestinian” Arab villages and towns are slightly-modified Hebrew names. It is difficult to dig in the ground of “Palestine” without uncovering Jewish artifacts, some thousands of years old. Meanwhile, two-thirds of Mandatory Palestine’s territory had been sliced off in the 1920s and used to set up Jordan, an Arab Palestinian state much larger than Israel. The remaining territory, Western Palestine, was to become the Jewish homeland. That was the original “two-state solution,” the same "innovation" now being promoted for the Western third of the remaining part of Palestine.

3. Falsehood: There is no Palestinian state today because of Israeli aggression and obstinacy.  

Truth: There is no Palestinian state today because of Arab aggression and obstinacy. In late 1947, the United Nations approved by a two thirds majority a proposal to create in to create in Western "Palestine" two states to replace the British Mandatory regime there. One would be Jewish and the other a Palestinian Arab state. The Jews agreed. The Arabs rejected the idea. The Arab states launched an attack of genocidal aggression against the Jews, invaded “Palestine” and gobbled up the lands earmarked for the Arab Palestinian state. Most of those lands were then held illegally by Jordan and semi-legally by Egypt until 1967 when they were liberated by Israel in the Six Day War. The Arab world has maintained a state of war with Israel since 1948, refusing to recognize its legitimacy, and attacking Israel over and over in a series of wars and terrorism campaigns. The Arab states attacked Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, and sponsored terrorist atrocities against Jews in Israel since it was created. The reason for the attack which produced the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 is exactly the same thing that stands in the way of any real peace settlement today.  

4. Falsehood:  Israel conducted “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948-49.  

Truth:  The Arab states conducted ethnic cleansing of Jews after 1948. About a million Jews were expelled by Arab states, their property stolen, and most then became citizens of Israel. Palestinian Arabs became refugees in 1948-49 as a direct result of the Arab war of aggression against Israel, in which the Palestinians participated. The estimated number of such Arab refugees varies between 400,000 and 750,000, with the former the more likely correct estimate. Afterwards, many were quietly allowed to return to Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs from other Arab countries then declared themselves “Palestinian refugees” in order to get handouts from the UN and other international relief organizations. The actual Palestinian Arabs became refugees for the same reason that ethnic Germans living in Eastern Europe became refugees after World War II: because they were on the losing side of the war of aggression launched by their own political leaders.  

5. Falsehood:  Israel is an apartheid regime and mistreats Arabs.  

Truth:  Israel is the only Middle East country that is NOT an apartheid regime. Arabs living under Israeli rule are the only Arabs in the Middle East who enjoy freedom of speech and of the press, free access to courts operating with due process, legal protection for property rights and the right to vote. Israeli Arabs have higher standards of education and health than any other group of Arabs in the Middle East. Israeli Arabs are quite simply the best-treated political minority in the Middle East and are in some ways better treated than are minority groups in many European countries. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that does NOT deal with Islamist terror through wholesale massacres of the people in whose midst the terrorists operate    

6. Falsehood:  Arabs engage in aggression and terrorism because Israel occupies territories.  

Truth:  Israel occupies territories (that had been controlled by Jordan and Egypt before 1967) because of Arab aggression and terrorism. Had the Arabs made peace with Israel after 1949, the West Bank and Gaza would have remained under the hegemony of Arabs and they could easily have erected a Palestinian Arab state there any time they wished. Instead, they attacked Israel in an attempt at genocidal extermination in 1967 and they lost.  

7. Falsehood:  The Middle East conflict is and has always been based on Israeli opposition to Palestinian self-determination.  

Truth:  The Middle East conflict is and has always been based on Arab opposition to Israeli-Jewish self-determination. There is one and only one cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, even if that single cause is buried beneath an avalanche of media mud designed to obfuscate and confuse. That single cause is the refusal of the Arab world to come to terms with Israel’s existence within any set of borders whatsoever. The cause of the war is Arab refusal to come to terms with Jewish self-determination in any form whatsoever. The Middle East conflict is not about the right of self-determination of “Palestinian Arabs,” but rather it is about the Arab rejection of self-determination for Israeli Jews. For a century, the Arabs have attempted to block Jewish self-determination, using violence.  

No Palestinians before 1967 demanded any “homeland,” although they did demand that the Jews be stripped of theirs. That is because Palestinians are not a “people” at all and do not consider themselves such, any more than do the Arabs of Paris or of Detroit. Palestinians never had any real interest in their own state, and in fact rioted violently in 1920 when “Palestine” was detached from Syria by the European powers. Indeed the original term “Nakba” (“catastrophe” in Arabic and in leftist NewSpeak) was coined to refer to the outrage of Palestinians separated from their Syrian homeland. Immediately after the Six Day War a sudden need for a Palestinian state was fabricated by the Arab world, as a gimmick to force Israel back to its pre-1967 borders. Israel would then again be ten-miles wide at its narrowest, and so prepped for the new Arab assault of annihilation and genocide.  

The Arab world invented the “Palestinian people” so that it would serve the same role as the Sudeten Germans did in the late 1930s. That role was to provide a pretense of legitimacy for the war aims and aggression of a large fascist power. The term “self-determination” has been repeated as a rhetorical “inalienable right” for so long that few people recall that pursuing “self-determination” can also serve as a tool of aggression by barbarous aggressors and totalitarian powers. When Hitler decided to go on a war of conquest in the late 1930s, he dressed up his intentions in the cloak of legitimacy, merely “helping disenfranchised and oppressed people attain self-determination.”  He distorted the plight of ethnic Germans living in the Czech Sudetenland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, inventing tales of mistreatment. In reality of course these ethnic Germans already had the option of “self-determination” within the neighboring, sovereign German nation-states, and in fact enjoyed far more freedom and rights than did Germans inside Germany. Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia was prepared through postured indignity over the mistreatment of Germans by Germany’s neighbors. Hitler insisted he was simply seeking to relieve the “misery of mistreated ethnic Germans,” supposedly suffering inside democratic Czechoslovakia. “Self-determination” was also the pretense when Germany attacked Poland and other countries.  

The Arab world decided that the “Palestinians” must play the role of Sudetens, serving as the political and moral pretense for Arab aggression and Islamofascist imperialism. The Arab fascists then misrepresent themselves as pursuing noble efforts at protecting a mistreated oppressed minority group of Arabs in need of “self-determination.”   

8. Falsehood:  Palestinian terrorism has been a response to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and as a response to Israeli settlements there.  

Truth:  Palestinian terrorism against Jews began in the 1920s, escalated in the 1930s, continued non-stop in the 1940s even in the midst of World War II, and reached heights of barbarism in the 1950s. All this was long before Israel “occupied” anything. The PLO was set up long before the Six Day War, meaning before Israel “occupied” the West Bank and Gaza, and before those areas held a single Israeli settlement.  

9. Falsehood: Israel has no right to build settlements in the West Bank.  

Truth:  Israel has as much right to build settlements in the West Bank as France has to build towns in Alsace and Lorraine, or as Poland has to build in areas that once held ethnic Germans. The Arabs launched a series of wars of aggression against Israel and lost. Aggressors who lose a war also lose territory. The bulk of Jewish “settlers” are actually Israelis living in the suburbs of Jerusalem that were constructed after 1967. A handful of small rural “settlements” have been constructed in empty West Bank lands from which no Arab civilians were evicted. In any real peace settlement, Jews would have as much right to live in the West Bank as Arabs have to live inside Israel. A peace accord that rules out such an arrangement would be no peace accord at all.  

10. Falsehood: The Middle East conflict continues because Israel refuses to share its land and resources with Palestinians.  

Truth:  The Middle East conflict continues because the Arab world refuses to share its land and resources with Jews. It is about the absolute refusal of the Arab world to acquiesce in the existence of any Jewish-majority political entity within any set of borders in the Middle East. The Arabs today control 22 countries and territory nearly twice the size of the United States (including Alaska), whereas Israel cannot be seen on most globes or maps. Arabs as an ethnic group control more territory than any other ethnic group on earth. They refuse to share even a fraction of one percent of the Middle East with the Jews, even in a territory smaller than New Jersey. Without the West Bank, Israel at its narrowest point is less than 10 miles wide, about the length of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The main reason the Arab world demands that Israel relinquish the West Bank to Palestinian terrorism is so that it can be used to attack Israel again and so that Israel can at last be militarily annihilated. The Arab world controls such vast amounts of territory and such vast amounts of wealth (thanks to petroleum) that it could have created a “homeland” for Palestinian Arabs anywhere within its territories at any time.   

11. Falsehood:  Israel deals with Palestinian violence and terrorism using excessive disproportionate force.  

Truth:  The number of innocent Palestinian civilians intentionally killed by Israel is exactly zero. The number of civilians injured in Israeli anti-terror operations is tiny when compared with NATO and Allied military operations in Serbia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Given the near universal support among Palestinians for terrorist atrocities against Jews, the self-restraint and moderation used by Israel in dealing with the threat has no precedent in the world. Israel’s own Arabs make little attempt to hide their open identification with the genocidal enemies of their own country and they by and large support the annihilation of the state in which they hold citizenship. No other democratic country facing such open sedition and identification with the enemy in time of war ever responded with anywhere near the same restraint as shown by Israel. In World War II, when faced with a far less-dangerous problem, the United States locked up its ethnic-Japanese domestic population in internment camps. Democratic Spain set up teams of death squads to deal with its separatist terrorists. Democracies in war have junked habeas corpus and treated their internal Fifth Columns as the enemy, with no hesitation or squeamishness.   

Democratic Czechoslovakia and India (as well as non-democratic countries throughout Eastern Europe) undertook wholesale expulsions of millions of members of their internal ethnic minorities who had sided with the enemy. Greece and Turkey and the two sections of Cyprus simply expelled altogether their minority populations. Israel, in contrast, operates affirmative action programs that benefit Arabs, finances Arabic-language schools in which Israeli Arabs preserve and develop their culture, overfunds Arab municipalities, and turns a blind eye to massive Arab sedition and lawbreaking, including with regard to illegal mass squatting on publicly-owned lands. Israel is a Western democracy with a Scandinavian style social welfare system, the only democracy in the Middle East. It is hard to come up with words to mock satisfactorily the ludicrous nature of the complaints about Israeli “mistreatment” of Arabs. These complaints come from the very same people who are apologists for genocidal Islamofascist terrorist movements and for the Arab fascist states, regimes that are among the most barbarous and openly war-seeking on earth. The endless complaints about “human rights violations” of the “Palestinians” by Israel are a rhetorical part of the broader campaign of aggression against Israeli survival. Arabs living under Israeli rule are the world’s foremost illustration of “Moynihan’s Law,” which holds:  “The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.”   

12. Falsehood:  Israel can achieve peace by trading “Land for Peace” and by relinquishing territories that it “occupies.”  

Truth:  Every time Israel relinquishes territory it “occupies” it triggers an escalation of terror and violence by Arabs against Jews. The main cause of anti-Israel terrorism today is the removal of Israeli occupation from Arabs. This is so obvious that it is a major intellectual challenge to explain why so few people understand it. Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip in its entirety in 2004 and evicted all Jews who had been living there. The complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip produced a barrage of thousands of rockets aimed at Israeli civilians inside Israel (NOT in the “occupied territories”), a barrage that eventually forced Israel’s reluctant leaders to carry out the “Cast Lead” operation against Gaza terrorism. The Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon was unilaterally ended in the year 2000 by then-Israeli socialist Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The direct result of that fiasco was the launching of 4,000 Katyusha rockets from Lebanon against northern Israel in the summer of 2006, and several times that number now poised to strike Israel. The worst waves of Palestinian suicide attacks were directly triggered by the early Oslo withdrawals — before which there had been no suicide bombings. There can be no doubt that a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and a return to pre-1967 borders would trigger a massive rocket and terror assault against the remaining areas of Israel, launched from the "liberated" lands in the West Bank. The same thing would result from Israel relinquishing the Golan Heights to Syria.  

13. Falsehood:  The Zionist Lobby exercises excessive influence and dictates policies to the United States, protecting Israel from just criticism.  

Truth:  The anti-Zionist Lobby exercises excessive influence and dictates policies to the United States, protecting Palestinians, Arab fascist regimes, and Islamofascism from just criticism. While the media overflow with nonsensical talk about a “Zionist/Israel Lobby,” it would only be a small exaggeration to claim that there is no such thing at all. The anti-Zionist lobby binds together anti-Semites and fanatics, ranging from Islamists, to the radical Left to the Neo-Nazi Right. There is little today that separates anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism and I have never met an anti-Zionist who was not also an anti-Semite. (Jewish leftist anti-Zionists are the self-hating moral equivalents of Taliban John and Tokyo Rose).   

14. Falsehood:  The Middle East conflict can be resolved through “Two States for Two Peoples.”

Truth:  The “Two States for Two Peoples” idea is not a solution at all but simply a strategy for weakening Israel and forcing it behind indefensible borders. Right after “Two States for Two Peoples” would be implemented, the new “Palestinian state” would invite the rest of the Arab world to finish off what remains of Israel. Even the “moderates” within the PLO insist that any “Israel” left standing within “Two States for Two Peoples” must be flooded by Arab migrants and stripped of its Jewish majority, in effect converted to yet another Arab Palestinian state. The Arabs still condition any “two-state solution” on Israel agreeing to being flooded with Arab immigrants purporting to be Palestinians, so that it will morph demographically into the 24^th Arab state. Israel obviously cannot agree. Israel would be blanketed in rocket and mortar fire from “Palestine” and waves of Arab terrorist infiltrators into Israel would raise the carnage to unprecedented levels.

That such a “two-state solution” will not end the conflict, but only signal the commencement of its next stage, has long been the quasi-official position of virtually all Palestinian groups. These have long insisted that any two-state solution is but a stage in a “plan of stages,” after which will come additional steps ultimately ending Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The “two-state solution” is no more realistic an option today than it was in 1948, when it was militarily squashed by the Arab states, terrorists, and armies. It is ultimately as much of an existential threat to Jewish survival in the Middle East today as the so-called “one-state solution,” favored by the anti-Semitic Left, in which Israel is replaced by a Rwanda-like bi-national entity controlled by Arabs, in which the Jewish problem will be resolved in a Rwanda-style manner.

Creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel would be a major step in the escalation of the Arab war against Israel's existence, even if that war is delayed for a brief time while the world celebrates the outbreak of a Potemkin “peace” in the Middle East produced by the end of Israeli "occupation" of “Palestinians.”  

Since the Oslo “peace process” began in the early 1990s, the working hypothesis endorsed by nearly everyone on the planet (including large numbers of IQ-challenged Israeli politicians) has been that the most urgent task at hand is to end the Israeli "occupation" of Palestinian Arabs. The problem is that ANY Palestinian state, regardless of who rules it, will produce nothing but escalated violence, terror and warfare in the Middle East, certainly not stability or peaceful relations. It will seek war with the rump Israel, and will seek to draw the entire Moslem world into that war. It will be indifferent to the economic and social problems of its own citizens.   

Humans seem to have a basic impatience with hearing the truth repeated over long periods of time. In an era in which technology, politics, and science change so rapidly, many consider it to be implausible that a statement that had been true 60 years ago could still be true today. Surely, they insist, explanations from the past, such as those of the Middle East conflict, must be obsolete by now, replaced with new updated “theories” and more-modern perceptions of reality.

The result of all this is pseudo-history, where people invent new “theories” about some of the most widely-accepted truths of history. No subject has been subject to quite so much pseudo-historic revisionism and denial of “out-of date” truths as the Middle East. George Orwell once said that the first duty of intelligent men is to restate the obvious. Obvious truths need to be restated because they are under assault by so many dishonest men.  

The Palestinians have no legitimate claim to a right to set up their own state, and creation of such a state would result in escalated warfare and bloodshed, not peace. There was never in history an Arab Palestinian state. Even if such a right ever existed, the Palestinians – like the Sudeten Germans - would have forfeited it thanks to decades of terrorism, savagery, mass murders and barbarism. Their pacification today requires reimposing of martial rule by Israel and a thorough program of De-nazification.

The promotion of a “Two States for Two Peoples” solution has radicalized and Nazified most Israeli Arabs, who now identify with and openly support Arab parties and politicians openly calling for violence against Jews and for the destruction of Israel. The “solution” is a recipe for more bloodshed and strife.

 

Steven Plaut is a professor at the Graduate School of the Business Administration at the University of Haifa and is a columnist for the Jewish Press.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Gaza War: Reviewing Amnesty International's Report on Operation Cast Lead.

 

by  Ratna Pelle and Wouter Brassé

Over the last half year the United Nations and a number of NGOs have been conducting investigations into the Israeli "Operation Cast Lead" a.k.a. the Gaza War, which lasted from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009. Several reports have been published and at least one more is forthcoming, from the UN investigation committee headed by Richard Goldstone.

The focus of these reports is basically whether Israel in the course of its military operation in the Gaza Strip has committed war crimes. Though most reports also criticize Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza to some extend, the blame is mostly put on Israel for using disproportionate force and for targeting Palestinian civilians as well as fighters.


On 2 July Amnesty International published the most comprehensive report to date, titled "Israel/Gaza - Operation 'Cast Lead': 22 Days of Death and Destruction". It suffers from a number of flaws, like neglecting the context of the war and the nature of the Hamas regime in Gaza, an uncritical approach to Palestinian witnesses and sources, selective use of Israeli sources and disregard for sources which contradict the opinions of the investigators, and a disputable view of ambiguous international laws and conventions. The most obvious of its flaws will be briefly discussed here. A more extensive review of the report by us can be found at: "Gaza War: A Review of Amnesty International's Report on Operation Cast Lead".

Neglecting the context of the war and the nature of the Hamas regime

The report ignores the causes and the context of Operation Cast Lead, making Israel look as if it attacked and devastated the Gaza Strip without warning or reason. In the years before Operation Cast Lead nearly ten thousand rockets and mortar shells were fired on Israel for this purpose, all potentially lethal and aimed at civilian targets. Hamas did not extend the cease-fire and had broken it many times in the previous month. It had used the time to smuggle vast amounts of weapons into Gaza, including Katyusha rockets with a range of over 40 kilometers. It was gaining the capacity to target major Israeli population areas and has repeatedly shown the willingness to do so. Amnesty should have provided this context.

No attention is paid to the nature and the goals of the Hamas. You cannot understand the conflict if you are unaware of Hamas's goal to liberate 'all of Palestine' by force and found an Islamic state there. Article 7 of the Hamas charter cites a Hadith calling for the killing of the Jews before the Day of Judgment will come. Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, who was killed by an Israeli air strike on January 1, called Jews a 'cursed people' who were transformed by Allah into apes and pigs and who are continually punished by Allah for their sins. Suicide terrorists and others who kill innocent Israeli civilians are hailed as martyrs by Hamas, and Palestinians are being incited against Jews and Israel. Young children are being taught that killing Jews and becoming martyrs is the highest achievable goal. Hamas celebrates the killing of Israeli civilians and aims at killing as many Jews as possible, as it openly proclaims. Hamas wants to scare all Jews away with rockets and terror attacks, and make all towns within Israel's borders ('settlements' in Hamas terminology) unlivable, as it has said repeatedly.

The report also neglects the role of Iran and the international setting. Hamas is being financed and trained by Iran and coordinates important decisions with Iran. Syria too supports Hamas and harbors its headquarters in Damascus. Israel was not merely fighting a small local movement but also a client of enemy states.

Uncritical approach to Palestinian sources, selective use of Israeli sources and disregard for sources which contradict the opinions of the investigators

The report is mainly based on testimonies by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which are sometimes heart-rending. The researchers conclude from this series of incidents that Israel deliberately and consciously brought death and destruction upon the population, as a deterrent or collective punishment. Palestinian and some Israeli sources are selectively used and others ignored, even when freely available in the media and on the internet. Tragic stories of Palestinian victims are contrasted with selective quotes from Israeli soldiers and sources which put them in a malicious light. Soldiers are quoted who said they were ordered to fight aggressively and shoot first, ask questions later, and some disgusting graffiti which soldiers left behind in Palestinian homes are repeatedly cited. Many other stories and quotes from Israeli soldiers can be found on the Internet, which paint a much more diverse picture, telling about doing everything possible to avoid harming innocents. In fact 120 IDF officers had been given the task of coordinating humanitarian aid and helping Gazan civilians in need.

The Amnesty report however leaves no room for nuance and seems to put the blame on Israel beforehand. Cited official Israeli statements are immediately contradicted in harsh terms and dismissed as unreliable. On the other hand, statements made by Gazans the investigators spoke with and reports from Palestinian human rights groups are believed almost without question. However, Amnesty ignores Palestinian eye-witness accounts from the media, footage and photos on the Internet about how Hamas used the population as human shields, misused ambulances, hid weapons and explosives in houses, mosques and public buildings, and enrolled children in its struggle. It also ignores statements by Hamas fighters and leaders about its goals and strategy, for instance bragging about crushing the 'Zionist enemy' or boasting about using human shields. The report selects only those sources which support its main thesis that Israel is to blame for a large scale destruction and killing of innocents which serves no justifiable military goal. Meanwhile Amnesty seems mild in its judgment of the Hamas. While condemning Palestinian rockets because they are indiscriminate, it claims lack of evidence for Hamas deliberately using civilians as human shields.

The report shows little understanding for the difficulties in fighting a guerrilla army that is hardly visible and can be everywhere and nowhere. War in a densely populated area is characterized as a challenge for both parties, and Israel is basically blamed for starting it and picking this dangerous battlefield.

According to Amnesty International, aside from 5,000 people wounded, a total of 1,400 Palestinians were killed during Israel's operation, 900 of whom were civilians. Amnesty based its numbers mostly on Palestinian sources. In addition to about 300 children, Amnesty regards all 115 women, all 85 Palestinians over the age of 50, most of the 240 Hamas police officers killed and another 200 unarmed civilians as civilian casualties, adding up to about 900 civilian deaths. Amnesty's definition of a civilian is rather broad. For instance, police officers are part of the Hamas control apparatus in the Gaza Strip and its military infrastructure, and many were also involved in armed groups like the Al Qassam Brigades. The entire armed branch of Hamas, including the diverse security and guerrilla forces, should be considered a legitimate target in a war, as are its political control apparatus, propaganda institutions and infrastructure.
As a matter of fact Hamas censured the media for reporting about the death of Hamas fighters, so the number of reported deaths from Hamas' side may be lower than the real number of their casualties.

Disputable view of ambiguous international laws and conventions

Amnesty International states that Israel neglected the rules of proportionality and distinction in international humanitarian law, and that the goals of military actions were not in proportion to the expected damage or risks of civilian deaths. Israel is also being accused of making little distinction between military and civilian targets. The first accusation is almost impossible to check in retrospect, certainly not without knowing the Israeli strategy and military considerations, which could only be determined by consulting Israeli military leaders.

By ignoring the causes of the war, the fact that Hamas is steadily building its military capacity and becoming a growing threat to Israeli civilians, and that Hamas is supported and sponsored by Iran, Amnesty showed that it disregards the Israeli position and military interests, and did not consider them in its judgment of the way the military campaign was conducted. The charge that Israel did not make a distinction between military and civilian targets is contradicted by the diverse Israeli efforts to spare civilian lives. Many more civilians would have been killed in the densely populated Gaza Strip if Israel had not made these efforts to warn civilians, to use expensive high precision weapons, to gather intelligence on Hamas targets months ahead of operation Cast Lead, and to initiate daily ceasefires.

Israel knows full well that a high number of civilian casualties rapidly increases international - and internal - pressure to prematurely end its campaign, and that its maneuver space is very limited. Israel has no choice but to weigh international opinion and support because of the constant international and media focus on its actions. The obvious military goal for Cast Lead was to strike a major blow to the Hamas, not to the civilian population of Gaza.

According to Amnesty International Israel is still occupying the Gaza Strip, because it controls the borders, airspace and territorial waters. Earlier Israeli incursions into Gaza are also cited as evidence that Israel can still be considered the occupying power. Nevertheless Amnesty in its report quotes the definition of occupied territory in the Hague Regulations, as being territory "actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised." How can Israel keep order and provide for enough food for the population, when Hamas de facto controls the area, runs its government facilities and distributes the goods?
Israel's control of most of the borders and the airspace above Gaza constitutes a (partial) siege or blockade, not an occupation. Defining the Gaza Strip as occupied by Israel enables Amnesty to condemn Israel for failing to take care for the well being of the population in the Gaza Strip, while the Strip is in fact governed by Hamas, Israel's sworn enemy.

The actual status of the Gaza Strip is unclear and is assessed variously by experts in international law. The absurd situation exists that Israel is delivering water, energy and humanitarian aid to an area governed by a hostile entity. The inhabitants of Gaza are caught in between the Hamas regime and Israel's measures to weaken and undermine it. A regime that, as a matter of fact, was chosen by the population in fairly democratic elections. Amnesty reduces this complex situation to a simple story in which Israel carries all responsibilities.

Recommendations and conclusions

Among the recommendations in the report is an arms embargo against both parties until they abide by international law as perceived by Amnesty. Israel should adjust its military rules and combat instructions so that incidents like the ones described in the report can no longer happen, and both parties and the international community should put perpetrators of war crimes on trail. While Israeli military policies and practices should be evaluated carefully and criminal conduct needs to be punished, it is not the place of the international community to pass such judgment where a legitimate, sovereign and democratic state is concerned.

Amnesty International proposes requirements for Israeli battle conduct which make it close to impossible to win a war against Hamas, demanding from Israel a rigid interpretation of international law which disqualifies most Hamas targets as legitimate targets. Meanwhile recommendations regarding Hamas are not likely to have any impact, as Hamas and its sponsors already refuse to meet the international demands placed on it, such as recognizing Israel and ending terrorism, and it receives its weaponry through illegal smuggling and self fabrication.
Israel on the other hand could face diplomatic, political, economic and security repercussions from a proposed arms embargo, as its military is dependant on trade and imports, and it has other enemies in the region it needs to defend itself against, like Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.

It is unfortunate that an organization as renowned as Amnesty International, which engages in defending human rights worldwide, publishes a report as biased and unfair as the one discussed here. Evidently awful things happened in Gaza, and Israeli forces did not always observe the internationally established rules of combat. The scale on which this occurred, the question of Israel's motives, and the role of Hamas are issues that have not been properly addressed by Amnesty International.

Ratna Pelle and Wouter Brassé, the Netherlands
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

As a response to allegations made against the IDF, the Israeli government has published a paper dealing with a number of issues. See: "The Operation in Gaza - Factual and Legal Aspects".