The extreme aversion of the US and Israeli armies to own-soldier casualties has huge and often unintended consequences in the realms of both strategic effectiveness and ethics. This is now being amply demonstrated with regard both to Israel’s practices in Gaza (and the West Bank), and US military’s practices in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Joshua Foust of the generally excellent Registan blog has a ‘guest writer’ gig on the Reuters Pakistan blog, summing up the most important things he learned during his just-completed ten-week military embed with the US forces in Afghanistan.
His main point, well illustrated in the Reuters post, is that the culture of extreme casualty aversion that’s dominant in the US military hobbles it from waging effective “counter-insurgency” in Afghanistan.
Writing that, “It is a cliché that, in counterinsurgency, one must be among ‘the people’,” Foust then shows some of the many ways in which the own-soldier casualty aversion of the US forces in Afghanistan means that that is not happening:
- A rural insurgency is a devil’s game. It is difficult for a foreign counterinsurgent force to concentrate itself to maximize effectiveness, in part because the insurgency itself is not concentrated. When there are no obvious population clusters, there are no obvious choices for bases. Bagram Air Base, the country’s largest military base, is in the middle of nowhere, comparatively speaking – dozens of miles north of Kabul, and a 45-minute drive from Charikar, the nearest city in Parwan Province. FOB Salerno, a large base in Khost Province, is miles away from Khost City, the province’s capital-and the road in between is riddled with IEDs.
The many smaller bases strung in between are surrounded by enormous Hesco barriers, concertina wire, and guard towers. No one is allowed on the base without being badged and interviewed by base security, and in many places delivery trucks are forced to wait in the open for 24 hours before completing their trips to the dining halls, clinics, or technology offices.
There are other ways in which Coalition Forces are separated from the people of Afghanistan beyond their heavily fortified bases. Most transit – on patrol, on delivery runs, or on humanitarian missions – is performed through Mine Resistance Ambush Protection, or MRAP vehicles. These enormous trucks, thickly plated with metal blast shields on the bottom with tiny blue-tinted ballistic glass, make it near-impossible to even see the surrounding countryside from another other than the front seat.
On the narrow mountain roads that sometimes collapse under the mutli-ton trucks, soldiers drive, too, in up-armored Humvees, which are similarly coated in thick plates of armor and heavy glass windows they aren’t allowed to open.
When soldiers emerge from their imposing vehicles, they are covered from head to groin in various forms of shielding: thick ceramic plates on the torso, the ubiquitous Kevlar helmets, tinted ballistic eye glasses, neck and nape guards, heavy shrapnel-resistant flaps of fabric about the shoulders and groin, and fire-resistant uniforms. A common sentiment among Afghans who see these men and women wandering in their midst is that they look like aliens, or, if they know of them, robots.
There is no doubt that MRAPs, up-armored Humvees, and the seventy pounds or so of bullet and blast shielding has saved the lives of countless soldiers. But counterinsurgency is counterintuitive: in the relentless quest to ensure a casualty-free war, it seems the West has begun to engineer its own defeat.
By separating itself so completely from the population it claims to be trying to win-even at Bagram, where there is almost no combat, ever, it is almost impossible for a soldier or civilian to walk outside the gates to purchase something in the nearby bazaar-there remain precious few opportunities to do the gritty work of actually trying to “win hearts and minds”.
The end result is stark: in a war that is desperately short of the troops needed to provide security to increasingly less remote communities, 93% of the soldiers stationed at the Coalition’s primary base never walk outside the gates. Instead of a focus on separating the insurgents from the population – another clichéd pillar of counterinsurgency – the focus seems instead to be simply killing as many of the enemy as can be identified.
I would just amend what he writes in one way, what “the west” is trying to fight in Afghanistan is not entirely a “casualty-free war”, but rather one in which the casualties among its own soldiers are reduced as far as possible toward zero. Casualties among the identified “enemy” may indeed, as he writes, tend to get maximized. But intense aversion to own-soldier casualties also– in both Afghanistan and Gaza– leads to far greater casualties than would otherwise be the case among the civilian population.
In Gaza, as many testimonies from the IDF soldiers themselves have now made clear, the general ROEs were that own-soldier casualties should be avoided even if that meant opening fire on Palestinian civilians. That, despite the fact that even the IDF’s own code of ethical conduct reminds soldiers that a soldier has a duty under international law to avoid civilian casualties even at the cost of some additional risk to his own troops.
In Gaza, many of the killings of civilians were fairly up-close affairs, but others were inflicted from drones or from aircraft flying at very high altitude– just like the way the US forces operate in Afghanistan (and Pakistan.)
This does not, as Foust notes, help win “hearts and minds” in a counter-insurgency context in Afghanistan.
And nor did it succeed, in Gaza, in inflicting a paralyzing dose of “shock and awe” to the Gazan population, where that seemed to be more of the intention than any form of, um, winning “hearts and minds.”
In today’s Haaretz, Amos Harel writes that before the latest Gaza war:
- The General Staff expected that Israelis would have trouble accepting heavy Israel Defense Forces losses.
The army chose to overcome this problem with an aggressive plan that included overwhelming firepower. The forces, it was decided, would advance into the urban areas behind a “rolling curtain” of aerial and artillery fire, backed up by intelligence from unmanned aircraft and the Shin Bet. The lives of our soldiers take precedence, the commanders were told in briefings. Before the operation, [GOC Southern Command Yoav] Galant and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi painted a bleak picture for the cabinet ministers. “Unlike in Lebanon, the civilians in Gaza won’t have many places to escape to,” Ashkenazi warned. “When an armored force enters the city, shells will fly, because we’ll have to protect our people.”
A large part of the operation was conducted by remote control. “The Palestinians are completely transparent to us,” says A., a reservist whose brigade was posted in the Gaza Strip. “The Shin Bet has people everywhere. We observe the whole area from the air and usually the Shin Bet coordinator can also tell you who lives in what house.” The Shin Bet defines the enemy and, for the most part, someone who belongs to Hamas’ civilian welfare organizations (the da’awa) is treated the same way as a member of its military wing, the Iz al-Din al-Qassam.
Essentially, a person only needs to be in a “problematic” location, in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be “incriminated” and in effect sentenced to death. Often, there is no need for him to be identified as carrying a weapon. Three people in the home of a known Hamas operative, someone out on a roof at 2 A.M. about a kilometer away from an Israeli post, a person walking down the wrong street before dawn – all are legitimate targets for attack.
“It feels like hunting season has begun,” says A. “Sometimes it reminds me of a Play Station [computer] game. You hear cheers in the war room after you see on the screens that the missile hit a target, as if it were a soccer game.”
…There is a discrepancy between the official military response, of denial and horrified disapproval, the testimonies of the Rabin pre-military preparatory course graduates, and the response to those reports by key officers, unwilling to be identified.
“What did you think would happen?” a senior officer wondered this week. “We sent 10,000 troops into Gaza, more than 200 tanks and armored personnel carriers, 100 bulldozers. What were 100 bulldozers going to do there?”
The IDF estimates that approximately 2,000 houses were destroyed in the fighting. The Palestinians say the figure is twice that. IDF officers, who were not surprised by the testimonies, recalled that during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, military courts convicted soldiers for killing civilians, including the British peace activist Tom Hurndall, who was killed in Gaza in 2003.
Harel also reminds us that it was not until the Second Intifada, which started in 2000, that the IDF judge advocate general “annulled the practice of opening an investigation into every killed Palestinian.”
Wow, that would be how many investigations they would have to launch into what went on in Gaza?
What Harel writes about the IDF’s targeting doctrine indicates very clearly indeed that the IDF was not trying to make the distinction, deemed essential under international humanitarian law, between combatant (legal) and noncombatant (illegal) targets.
I don’t have time to write more about this important topic now. I’ll just note that the lethal and destructive consequences of the decision that both the IDF and apparently also the US military have made, to work to avoid own-soldier casualties even where this can clearly be expected to increase the casualties inflicted on noncombatants are first and foremost quite tragic for the civilian residents of the war-zone.
Making this decision to value the lives of one’s own soldiers above that of civilian residents of the war-zone is racist and, quite simply, illegal under international humanitarian law.
Also, at the end of the day these decisions are strategically either ineffective in these kinds of wars or even actively counter-productive.
All of Foust’s post there on the Reuters blog bears close reading. He points out that the extreme own-soldier casualty aversion of the US troops in Afghanistan has resulted in huge areas of the country simply being ceded to the effective control of insurgent forces.
He concludes with these wise words:
- It is that mentality – severe risk aversion, coupled with attention paid to process rather than outcome – that risks ultimately undoing the Western mission in Afghanistan. As an institution, the U.S. Army seems unwilling to make the difficult choices necessary to create the conditions for peace: a population that is adequately protected from the crime, drug, and war lords, and therefore no longer contributing to the desperate regional instability.
It is also a mentality that can be challenged in small doses from below, but demands concerted action from above. Command at the highest levels is vital in changing course, and admitting that war is actually a terrible and ghastly thing that requires your own people dying to win. It is a choice not many at the top seem willing to consider.
I should note that I disagree strongly with Foust in his assessment that for the US “winning” in Afghanistan is even possible. But he is a realist; and he’s right to note that the idea that the US can ever “win” in Afghanistan without taking very many casualties among its own soldiers is quite wrongheaded.
He’s equally right to remind everyone that “war is actually a terrible and ghastly thing.”
Because of that, international customary law lays upon every international actor that has a deep conflict with another party a very strong responsibility to find non-military ways to resolve that conflict.
Do such non-military ways exist in the case of Israel, with the Palestinians, or the US, in Afghanistan?
Of course they do.
The “rolling curtain” and “artillery box” techniques originated in the combined arms operations of the Yom Kippur War, to minimize the vulnerability of armored forces in urban areas in which the Arab armies had local superiority in anti-tank missiles. This style of warfare reflects the militarization of civilian urban terrain by the defense such that ascribing responsibility solely to Israel for civilian casualties is an exercise in anti-Israel bias, sophistry, and casuistry. Since Hamas was bragging about its Iranian anti-tank missiles, the IDF adopted appropriate rules of engagement for low-speed, low visibility operations over long lines of communication with obstructed lines of sight.
I have the sense that what Hamas really wanted was Jenin redux, with a bunch of Israeli reservists trapped, blown up and shot up in a courtyard, and Israel was not willing to play that game a second time. “Winning hearts and minds” comes a distant second to force protection when facing non-uniformed combatants in a totally militarized civilian space, when the destruction of a strategic rocket threat is at issue. While Gaza was effectively policed using police tactics in the 70s, rockets, missiles and IEDs qualitatively altered the battle space in totally predictable ways.
I think the IDF probably worked at the limits of technical capacity to distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between civilians and Hamas members, and simply chose to take da’wa as seriously as Hamas does. While this is all pretty grim, it was not necessarily unforeseen by Hamas.
Eurosabra’s posting suffers from the elementary fault that he does not explain why the IDF had to go into Gaza in the first place.
It went there to kill civilians. The idea that it needed to protect itself from Hamas’ (Iranian supplied) WMDs would be laughable were it not that we know that the IDF was precisely aware of the weakness of Hamas’ armoury.
In fact this expedition, which Eurosabra justifies as a hard bitten Israeli refusal to “play that game again,” was nothing more than a shameful, cowardly and genocidal attack on a population which was well known to be virtually defenceless.
@bevin,
After a couple months and you still don’t know why Israel went into Gaza? Why should Eurosabra explain it every time?
Tell me, why would Israel send 10,000 soldiers into Gaza and kill only 1,400? IDF troops have the best of weapons out there. If they were genocidal, wouldn’t it be at least one dead Gazan per IDF soldier? When Hamas sends someone into Israel with their favorite weapon, the suicide belt, they kill dozens. Who the genocidal group here?
In WWII, the reason a lot more Russian soldiers died than American/British soldiers was because the Soviet Union wasn’t a democracy, hence the Soviet government didn’t have any pressure to do the most they can to keep their soldiers alive. Israel is a democracy so they do the most to keep their soldiers alive. Hamas has no pressure to keep their soldiers, or their constituency to stay alive. What did Hamas do to keep their constituency out of the battlefield?
The end result is stark: in a war that is desperately short of the troops needed to provide security to increasingly less remote communities, 93% of the soldiers stationed at the Coalition’s primary base never walk outside the gates. Instead of a focus on separating the insurgents from the population – another clichéd pillar of counterinsurgency – the focus seems instead to be simply killing as many of the enemy as can be identified.
Someone observed that an enterprise of any sort is optimised to get the results it actually does get, and not the results it claims to aspire to.
The American occupation of Afghanistan is there to protect Pipelinistan in Pepe Escobar’s phrase. And to sally forth and spread terror as frequently as necessary to “keep up morale” among the alien-occupiers.
The aggression in Afghanistan is indefensible in more ways than one.
What are we thinking to allow a “popular” president to escalate a war like this? Is it his and our “reward” for “winning” an election, to be able to kill Americans and Afghans in this mis-matched gladiatorial combat, for his own and our “glorification” and entertainment?
This is the final indelible stain, the one with no time to wash out, for the empire will collapse around these aliens in their unsupportable outpost in Afghanistan.
The Israelis have been at the same thing for years. But they gleefully cast the Palestinians into outer darkness along with their own humanity decades ago. They feel they can live without self-respect.
If we really think that we can live that way as well that illusion will fade along with our ability to project murder and mayhem and to the far side of the earth. And the Israelis’ ability to project murder and mayhem on to the far side of The Wall will fade even as we do.
…ascribing responsibility solely to Israel for civilian casualties is an exercise in anti-Israel bias, sophistry, and casuistry.
Exceptionally well stated.
Israel will fail in Palestine just as the US will fail in Afghanistan because in each place they are the aggressors, the insurgents. The Taliban and Hamas are the true counter-insurgents and just like in so many other places the aggressors (insurgents) will eventually lose. It may take time, but they will surely lose, as history is a judge.
Beirut is instructional. A recent news report:
The war ravaged Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold that includes the teeming neighbourhood of Haret Hreik, where a mammoth Hezbollah-orchestrated reconstruction drive is underway.
The deafening explosions of Israeli bombs have been replaced by the grinding cacophony of earth-movers and cement mixers contracted to rebuild 241 of the 282 buildings destroyed in the bombing.
The project, dubbed Waad (pledge in Arabic), has won the heart of Hassoun but has also raised a storm of political dust between Hezbollah and the government, whose authority in the southern suburbs has lagged for decades.
“I used to dream of an apartment where the living room was separated from the dining area and where the kitchen would be much bigger, and Waad gave me that,” Hassoun told AFP during a Hezbollah-organised tour of Haret Hreik.
“May God protect (Hezbollah chief Hassan) Nasrallah. He has kept his promise,” she said from her ninth-storey flat in one of several spanking new towers.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hpSIzLAZiJ7Wi5ooQODEv5PqwMEA
I saw that report too, Don Bacon, and it filled me with hope as well. Hamas’ cranes would be swinging in Gaza if it were not for US/EU complicity there with the Israelis. But in the long run Hamas will rebuild all that we and the Israelis have tried to destroy and more.
On the aliens in Afghanistan I read:
Afghan soldier shoots dead US pair
An Afghan soldier shot dead two US coalition troops and wounded a third before turning the gun on himself, a statement from the US military said.
One coalition soldier was killed on the spot, while the other died later of his wounds, the statement said.
“The Afghan National Army soldier reportedly killed himself immediately after the incident,” it added. The motive for the shooting is unclear.
The motive is fury and despair. Imagine being an Afghan watching a seemingly endless line of foreign troops from one country or another march through your land, this last one murdering at random Afghans at the most joyous moments of their otherwise difficult lives.
What the hell are we thinking? Get these Americans home now and leave the poor Afghans alone!
The idea that Obama can “fix” Pakistan is arrogance and hubris without bounds!
“Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that Al-Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the US homeland from its safe-haven in Pakistan,” Bush said in a sober televised speech.
“We have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their return to either country in the future,” he said as he released results of a 60-day policy review.
“That is a cause that could not be more just. And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: We will defeat you.”
Flanked by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Bush backed a Senate bill to triple US aid to Pakistan’s democratic government to $1.5 billion a year over five years.
“Make no mistake, Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within,” he said, hours after a suicide bomb at a mosque in Pakistan killed more than 50 people and wounded 50 more.
Except it wasn’t 2003 and it wasn’t Bush, Powell and Rumsfeld.
It is 2009 and it’s Obama, Clinton, and Gates.
Eurosabra
There is not a shred of evidence to support this. Quite the opposite, in fact. There is plenty of contemporaneous photograpic and forensic evidence to indicate the opposite, such at the attacks on medical personnel and the shelling of a civilian areas using WP shells.
All drones carry real-time video feeds which are archived. Israel should release them all, not just selected ones.
It is not well enough understood that all of the US’ disputes with Al-Qaeda, and essentially all of the West’s disputes with the Muslim world resolve to the dispute over the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.
The hundreds of troops killed in Afghanistan, like the thousands of troops killed in Iraq, the risk that in pressuring Pakistan to undertake unpopular policies, the US may cause the country to fail and the probably more than trillion dollars in resources recently directed just at the countries listed here would be unnecessary if the US publicly advocated a post-Zionist one state solution.
Israel is a heavy burden on the West, especially on the United States. The sooner it is recognized as an intolerable burden, the better.
There is plenty of contemporaneous photograpic and forensic evidence to indicate the opposite, such at the attacks on medical personnel and the shelling of a civilian areas using WP shells.
Really Irish Quacker? What exactly is the nature of this evidence, and who has analyzed it?
For example, we were all treated to a report last month from Amnesty International in which they clearly identified M825 A1 155mm munitions that had been used in Gaza by the IDF. And because they told us so, we all believed that these were “white phosphorous artillery shells”. However, the fact is that these are Felt Wedge smoke shells that contain small amounts of white phosphorous to light the felt wedges they contain.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/m825.htm
The ICRC reported that it appeared that the IDF had used these shells legitimately (primarily to create smoke screens).
(In contrast, Hamas or Jihad Islami did fire a WP mortar shell into Israel which scatters large amounts of white phosphorous – this is in clear contravention to the rules of war.)
I tend to agree with Eurosabra. The IDF did probably work to the limits of its technological capabilities – often endangering troops and their missions to sort out civilians for legitimate targets. Of course, Hamas “fighters” did not help when they were ordered not to wear their uniforms or other identifying markings; when they stored arms and munitions in mosques and private houses; and when their leaders issued fatwas that their families were not to leave their houses when they received warnings from the IDF.
Oh, and by the way, it appears that much of the earlier stories about atrocities by the IDF have now been debunked:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=1647
(I know, this is the hated CAMERA site, but I can vouche for the veracity of the translation from Ma’ariv.)
All this talk about what Israel did or did not do in Gaza could have been substantially mitigated or eliminated if Israel had not blocked all outside journalists from covering the invasion. There was a reason for the secrecy. In the law, one who hides relevant material is deemed to be guilty of the claims of the other side.
There was a reason for the secrecy.
Right Jack. Like, for example, giving away troop strengths and movements.
I think truth has been a casualty in the Islamic world since about 613 CE.
JES,
There are numerous pictures of the illegal use of WP in Gaza, here and here
There are reports by HRW and Amnesty International.
Doctors in Gaza reported unusual burns consistent with those caused by WP.
Regarding civilian casualties, you only believe that Israel probably acted to avoid killing civilians. Again, there is no evidence to back up your belief but plenty of video, picture and eye witness evidence to support the opposite. Israel could release all footage from drones or F15s but chooses not to do so.
In the meantime, Gaza is under an illegal siege by land, sea and air, with Israeli warplanes creating sonic booms over Gaza, gunboats shelling fishing boats and the beaches and dones constantly buzzing overhead.
I find it sad to think I can condemn the use of suicide bombing and the firing of rockets into Gaza, yet supporters of current Israeli government actions refuse to level any criticism. Palestinians have been dehumanised by Israel. They just want to have their own state inside internationally recognised borders. Unfortunately, many commenters here would like those borders to be those of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.
IrishQuaker,
You put your faith in Dr’s. Without Borders. Ridiculous. They might be great doctors, but when it comes to their views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, they are all anti-Israel activists who throw the objectivity they bring to their profession out the window in favor of their political agenda.
Why would ANYONE believe ANTHING that Islamiac terrorists say?
The very fact that Hamas used a heavily populated area,by civilians to fire on Israeli defence forces shows their reckless disregard for their own civilian lives. Israel cannot be held accountable for the consequences of their actions since it was Hamas who chose to fire in a heavily populated area.
There is no more peaceful negotiation with Hamas. Nobody wants to deal with them anymore. Were I to post this from Gaza I would have (at best) 9mm rounds though both knees tonight.
Smoke ‘em while you ‘gottem,
There is no more peaceful negotiation with Hamas. Nobody wants to deal with them anymore.
WASHINGTON – Nine former senior US officials and one current adviser are urging the Obama administration to talk with leaders of Hamas to determine whether the militant group can be persuaded to disarm and join a peaceful Palestinian government, a major departure from current US policy.
LONDON, England (CNN) — A group of British politicians is trying to force the government in London to talk to Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement considered a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom, one of the politicians told CNN.
Khaled Meshaal (center right) meets British and EU lawmakers, headed by Clare Short (center left), in Damascus on Saturday.
Baroness Jenny Tonge, a member of the House of Lords, met the political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, in Syria along with other British politicians on Saturday, she said.
“There are many politicians in Britain… who are increasingly frustrated that Hamas are not included in talks about peace,” she told CNN by phone from the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Don,
How you’re supposed to negotiate with a group with a charter that calls for your eradication?
One of the the US’s biggest mistakes was letting Hamas participate n elections in 2006 and Kadima’s agreement in letting it happen in direct cintrast to our most basic interests. Hitler also came to power through the democratic process. The question is whether Netanyahu will have the beitzim ( balls) to withstand the appeasers pressure while convincing any sane and realistic people in the West, that weild significant influence, to back us up. I cannot think of any other Israeli leader that can do it better than him.
JES – for many years, governments who have nothing to hide have allowed journalists to cover the action and then censored out anything that could interfere with operations or safety. What Israel does – totally barring any witnesses -is unprecedented. Then again, they have more to hide, don’t they?
Jack,
In Iraq the Americans followed the Israeli playbook to a noticeable extent, including banning journalists, such as in Falluja. And then, of course, when journalists WERE allowed in they were “embedded”, which gave the military control over what they saw, and to a significant extent what they reported. Journalists whose reports displeased the military often lost their embed status.
And then, of course, there were the American attacks on media organizations whose reporting displeased them. Two attacks on Al Jazeera, arresting, detaining, and sometimes torture of journalists, including holding them at Guantanamo, and killings of journalists.
JR,
How you’re supposed to negotiate with a group with a charter that calls for your eradication?
Hamas has not to my knowledge called for the destruction of the US or the UK, and it is these countries that I cited above where some want to negotiate with Hamas, counter to your false claim that nobody wants to negotiate with the Gaza government.
Countries regularly negotiate with other countries with which they are at war and which have sworn to defeat them (quite common in war). Hamas isn’t even a country, which makes it easier. If mighty Israel claims to fear destruction by tiny Hamas it is only to squeeze more sugar out of Uncle Sam.
The UK has been talking to Hezbollah — good for them.
Hamas should not be engaged by the rest of the civilized world until they follow the basic rules of civilized society.
THe only thing that talking to Hamas will do is give them a propaganda victory and more breathing space to keep on lobbing larger and larger rockets at Israel.
JR: I would venture to say that truth has been a casualty in Judaism since Noah cursed all Africans to a life of penury and slavery right down to Madoff and the reptilian Rahm Emmanuel with the darting eyes and the constantly licking tongue. Gimme some examples of Islamic lies and I will provide a link to Torah and Talmud.
Muezzin… reminds me of Nazi propaganda.
I was wondering if you guys were still around. I was beginning to think you were extinct. Guess not. What a shame.
JR,
Hamas should not be engaged by the rest of the civilized world until they follow the basic rules of civilized society.
The basic rules of “the rest of the civilized world”? Do the German holocaust and the US/UK aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan concern you, with their millions of casualties and their millions of displaced persons? The wanton destruction by Israel of South Beirut and Gaza? The continuing oppression against Palestinians? This is your “civilized world?”
How about some sense of scale here, or are you incapable of it, Hamas being your bogeyman du jour.
Read the Amnesty International report. Then read the article I cited. Then look at those pictures. The “wedges” are WP impregnated felt. Once ignited, the felt burns and produces smoke. The WP is there as an ignition agent and is simply used up. (There’s also phosphorous in most tracers, for example, but use of tracer ammunition is perfectly legal because the amount of phosphorous minute and it is used up quickly.)
Regarding Amira Hass’ article in Ha’aretz, look again. What we have are unnamed physicians in unnamed hospitals speaking anonymously.
There is nothing new about this. During the Second Lebanon War there were charges of Israel using a “mystery weapon” that burned and blackened the skin but left the body inside intact. Similar stories eminated from “doctors” in Iraq following the battle for Fallujah. There were reports of the IDF using a “mystery gas” several years ago in Gaza. All of these stories proved, on closer examination, to simply be false. (The one thing about Amira Hass is that she is rarely, if ever, held accountable for these stories or asked to somehow verify them with names, locations, etc.)
What is interesting, however, is that the only physicians that Hass cites are Israeli physicians describing, in general, the types of wounds caused by white phosphorous. One of the physicians cited:
…Dr. Gil Hirschorn, who is also a colonel in the army and head of trauma in the office of the IDF’s chief medical officer, states: ‘During Operation Cast Lead, intelligence was received that Hamas was making use of an ordinance that contains phosphorus. Phosphorus is a poisonous substance, white-yellowish, similar to wax, that is used in mortar shells and hand grenades…’
The only reason that I said “probably” was because Hamas “fighters”, on the whole, put up such a miserable resistance that the IDF really didn’t have to face a lot of the dilemmas they might have, had they had to use their full military force. After spending months drawing up plans and fortifying every inch of Gaza with underground installations (many of which were probably built with the concrete purchased by EU donations); after booby trapping blocks of houses, schools and even zooz; after drawing up plans for sniper positions and for IED placements and bragging about the “heavy price” that the IDF would have to pay, it appears that the majority of fighers simply ran.
for many years, governments who have nothing to hide have allowed journalists to cover the action and then censored out anything that could interfere with operations or safety.
Oh yea Jack? Well, why don’t you name one, since Vietnam, where the press was allowed unfettered access.
And then, of course, there were the American attacks on media organizations whose reporting displeased them.
Right Shirin. Perhaps you should ask the Italian film crew who filmed the Ramallah lynching what threats they came under. Or you might want to drop a line to Philip Caputo who was kneecapped by Palestinians in Beirut when he published something that told the truth about them.
JR: Anyone breathing reminds you of Nazi propaganda. That crap may work on supersensitive Europeans. The rest of us don’t give a damn. I also realise that you only care what the Euros (and by extension the US) think since they have the cash that you can suck out like leeches. As I have suggested before lets leave religion out of these discussions since most street fights are due to avarice. If you don’t I will go mediaeval on your turdy little religion.
JR,
I won’t respond to an ad hominem.
JES,
Again, there is no evidence to back up this statement:
Where are the Israeli army’s pictures of these underground installations and IEDs? If they existed, you would think that they would be used to justify their assault, including the demolotion of every single building in Juhr El Dik.
Also, how can you support the bulldozing of Olive groves and cultivated fields or the shelling of Gaza fishermen?
Oh come on, Quaker! The IDF Spokesman was regularly releasing films and photos almost every day during Operation Cast Lead, and these images were carried by most major news outlets.
In one case, the school in which the IDF soldiers were sleeping had been booby trapped, as had the nearby zoo. Luckily, a soldier who got up in the middle of the night to relieve himself outside discovered the fuse that led to a large amount of explosives. In other cases, numerous tunnels and underground storage facilities in “civilian” homes were shown, as were kitchen cabinets with mortar shells.
Apparently you missed these because you were too busy wathching al-Jazeera!
Here you go Quaker:
http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk
I think you’ll find ample evidence there.
You might also find this interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WssrKJ3Iqcw
Hamas has to be utterly destroyed. If only that could be done without killing innocent men, women and children. But that’s the challenge. Hamas militants don’t wear a big H on their chest to make things easy.
Yes, the Europeans are exquisitely sensitive.
http://www.tdg.ch/actu/suisse/initiative-contre-minarets-inquiete-economiesuisse-2009-03-27
for example, this pantywaist opposes a current initiative to ban minarets in Switzerland. Not on moral grounds, mind you; he thinks it’s bad for business! He is deeply sensitive to Swiss financial interests in Morocco and the Gulf.
Look, when Muezzin makes vile statements about Jews– all Jews– or JR says something like”Hamas has to be utterly destroyed”, both statements are quite hateful and I ask people not to post inciteful statements like those here.
If you violate this request you can be banned.
I thinks it’s clear what Muezzin means with some of his/her hate-statements. But JR, what actually do you MEAN by your hate-statements?
Hamas is many, many things. At the political level it is primarily the party that won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. How can you propose that the whole party– and presumably everyone who voted for it– “should be destroyed”?
Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state as a Jewish state, yes. But Likud’s charter calls for NO Palestinian state to be established anywhere in historic Palestine, at all. Also complete politicide– or more like, politi-abortion before any birth has even been allowed… So why should anyone deal with Likud? Why shouldn’t we, according to your logic, say that all of Likud “should be destroyed”?
Meantime, as I noted in my most recent IPS piece, Khaled Meshaal is saying “judge us by our deeds, not by our words”– not a bad standard at all… And 69 percent of Israelis– and I think that poll was of Jewish israelis, only– say that Israel should negotiate with Hamas. Strikes me that 69% of Israelis are far more realistic and less out-and-out racist than you.
Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state as a Jewish state, yes. But Likud’s charter calls for NO Palestinian state to be established anywhere in historic Palestine, at all. Also complete politicide– or more like, politi-abortion before any birth has even been allowed… So why should anyone deal with Likud? Why shouldn’t we, according to your logic, say that all of Likud “should be destroyed”?
So, Helena, what you are saying is that the Hamas is just as evil as the Likud?
Likud and Hamas are crude reflections of each other with one important difference: Likud leaders sit in their comfortable office suites carrying out high-tech assassinations of Hamas leaders along with dozens of innocent Palestinian children and other bystanders, while not a single Israeli leader has ever been assassinated by Hamas operatives.
Israeli leaders are either assassinated by their own citizens or the evil so corrodes their arteries that they turn to vegetables while still in office. There is a third operation, I suppose, they are driven from office due to financial scandals or criminal charges of rape against their own female office staff. Such evil makes Hamas look like a group of girl scouts by comparison.