From Specialst Armer to Obama: Actions vs. Words

The WaPo today informs us that US troops are increasingly “uneasy” in Iraq. No mention is made of the carnage being inflicted on Gaza as a concern.
Instead, journo Ernesto Londoño informs us that the concern is over “the new security agreement that demands that American combat troops depend more heavily than ever on their often-bungling Iraqi counterparts.” That, we are told, has left some troops feeling “vulnerable.”
Londoño quotes a US Army Specialist Cory Aermer, age 23:

“We’ve got to walk on eggshells…. I understand you can’t go out and shoot everyone and play Rambo. But war is war. We shouldn’t be falling under the jurisdiction of a country we’re at war with.”

Excuse me? Assuming Londoño didn’t put words in his mouth, somebody should explain to Specialist Armer that the US Army is not at war with the country of Iraq, but with, “the bad guys.” The idea of course is to get the good people of Iraq to reject the “bad guys,” to help them stand independently for themselves.
When not taking condescending swipes at Iraqi soldiers, Londoño appears to be siding with complaints about US troops being “forced” to “comply with the new requirement that bars the U.S. government from holding suspected criminals who have not been charged by Iraqi authorities.” According to a US Captain Dominic Heil,

“We used to detain people for their intelligence value only…. We can’t do that anymore.”

One hopes the Captain comprehends that the policy shift is actually good for American interests. It’s far easier to convince Iraqis of the merits of things like the rule of law when the US practices what it preaches. National Security “Mom” has it right: “Actions speak louder than words.”
An all-too-sad excuse often made for US soldiers behaving badly in Iraq was their civilian leadership’s winking and nodding at human rights abuses. I still have hopes for the incoming administration, but Barrack Obama’s comments on Sunday explaining why he’s in no apparent rush to close the Guantanamo Bay are disconcerting:

It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize and we are going to get it done but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it’s true.

Obama apparently wants to create “a process” by which we can keep them and get around (e.g., “balance”) those pesky human rights concerns that the world finds so important. Glen Greenwald draws out the implications of Obama’s apparent stance here:

What he’s saying is quite clear. There are detainees who the U.S. may not be able to convict in a court of law. Why not? Because the evidence that we believe establishes their guilt was obtained by torture… But Obama wants to detain them anyway…. So before he can close Guantanamo, he wants a new, special court to be created…. where evidence obtained by torture… can be used to justify someone’s detention….. That’s what he means when he refers to “creating a process.”

Mr. President elect, say it isn’t so. Please stop even implying actions that will drown out our words. In your campaign, you eloquently said that, “we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values.”
Just what message would a “process” that permits the use of evidence obtained through torture send?

Gaza open thread, mid-Jan

Here’s Cordesman’s excellent strategic analysis to start you off.
And here’s some excellent legal analysis from Shamai Leibowitz, on “Israeli Soldiers’ Duty to Prevent the Commission of War Crimes”.
Here, also from Shamai, is an Open Letter to Israeli Soldiers on their responsibility to do this.
… So friends, I know that many people’s emotions are getting run ragged with what’s happening. But please try to stay civil and respectful in your comments here. Some of them have been getting close to massive group stereotyping or even hate speech. You might want to go and re-read the JWN commenters’ guidelines.

Trash Talk

Reader D. Mathews has alerted us to a despicable congressman, Mark Kirk (R-IL), who said at a pro-Israel rally: “To misquote Shakespeare, something is rotten in Gaza and now it’s time to take out the trash.”
Here are some visuals of the “trash” that has been ‘taken out of Gaza’, here, here, here, here and here.
Speaking of trash, it seems to me that something is rotten in the US Congress, and judging from its 20% poll approval rating and its 71% disapproval rating I’m not the only one who thinks this way.

Blogging on Gaza

Some news and opinions from Middle East bloggers.
From Gaza, with Love:
8th of January -13th day of the Israeli Attack against Gaza
720 are killed
including :-
215 children
89 women
12 1st aid health workers
more than 3000 are injured many with serious injuries
11 ambulances were attacked and destroyed while on duty
a Palestinian mother:
The military offensive in the Gaza Strip is affecting civilians indiscriminately, while medical teams continue to face serious obstacles to providing assistance, the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today. The international community must not be content with a limited truce, which MSF said is largely inadequate for providing life-saving assistance.
The Gaza Blog:
‘This is not like the previous invasions – this time they mean to kill us. There is no escape.’
Israeli human rights groups:
Maysa’ a-Samuni, 19, tells how on 4 Jan., Israeli soldiers ordered her entire extended family to gather in one building. The next morning, as some members tried to leave, the army shelled the building, killing and wounding dozens.

Continue reading “Blogging on Gaza”

Counter Recruitment

This is the third and final installment in the American Warrior trilogy. Previous articles were on the need and recruitment of “warriors” into the US military ground forces.
Counter-recruitment is a strategy often taken up to oppose war. Counter-recruitment is an attempt to prevent military recruiters from enlisting civilians into the military. There are several methods commonly utilized in a counter-recruitment campaign, ranging from the political speech to direct action. Such a campaign can also target entities connected to the military, such as intelligence agencies, or private corporations, especially those with defense contracts.
Military recruitment and resistance to it has historically been a significant political issue in colonies of the British Empire. This is true in Ireland especially as the campaigns for independence from the British Empire intensified. The British Army raised many regiments from English colonies to fight in conflicts such as the Crimean War, World War I, and World War II. Irish songs opposing recruitment to the British army that date from the mid 1800s provide some evidence that this colonial policy was resisted – examples include Arthur McBride, Mrs. McGrath, and Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, which in part goes:

    With your guns and drums and drums and guns, hurroo, hurroo
    With your guns and drums and drums and guns, hurroo, hurroo
    With your guns and drums and drums and guns
    The enemy nearly slew ye
    Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer
    Johnny I hardly knew ye.
    Where are your eyes that were so mild, hurroo, hurroo
    Where are your eyes that were so mild, hurroo, hurroo
    Where are your eyes that were so mild
    When my heart you so beguiled?
    Why did ye skedaddle from me and the child?
    Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye.
    Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo
    Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo
    Where are your legs that used to run
    When you went for to carry a gun
    To be sure but your dancing days are done
    Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye.

Continue reading “Counter Recruitment”

Going to Syria

This afternoon I’m leaving for Syria. I’m part of a delegation of (non-governmental) US citizens– most of whom are considerably closer to the “Establishment” here than I am– whose goal is to explore with Syrian counterparts and colleagues the possibilities for improving the US-Syrian relationship.
After eight years in which Dick Cheney and Elliott Abrams systematically blocked any attempt to do this, I hope the time is right for some real change.
It won’t be easy. The extremist pro-Israeli lobbying groups in this country still have considerable, continuing clout in Congress (as was demonstrated by this past week’s “Swift-boating” of any attempts at balanced congressional resolutions on Gaza, which was orchestrated completely by AIPAC.) Regarding Syria, back in 2003 the US congress passed into law the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSRA) which sought to place considerable additional sanctions and restrictions on Syria– additional to those that already stemmed from Syria’s longstanding identification by the State Department as a State Supporter of Terrorism.
The US has not had an ambassador in Syria since 2006. There are huge numbers of issues that need to be untangled…
I’m not sure our little group can untangle them all. But I hope we can do something to improve and expand bilateral ties at all levels.
Dick Cheney and the people whom he had carefully placed throughout the Bush administration argued that Syria is both a state supporter of terrorism and a highly dictatorial state… and because of that it should not be “rewarded” in any way by being engaged with in the conduct of normal diplomacy, or even treated as a normal member of the “family of nations”. Instead, it should be ostracized, excluded, and punished until such a time as either President Bashar al-Asad raised a white flag of complete surrender to US power, or he was overthrown.
Even when Israeli PM Olmert opened up his indirect final-peace negotiating channel with Asad through Turkey 18 months ago, Cheney and his supporters tried to dissuade him from doing that!
I find it highly ironic, regarding the whole “democratization” business the Bushites were– oh-so-briefly– enamored of in the Middle East, that actually the government of Syria reflects the will of the Syrian people in matters of national policy to a considerably greater degree than the governments of Egypt or Jordan, both of which are staunchly and generously supported by Washington. (Actually, that’s a big part of why their citizens don’t like those two governments. That, and the extremely repressive practices of their US-funded “security” services.)
Right now, getting a decent working relationship with Syria’s government and people is more important for the true interests of the US citizenry than ever before. Syria is a key actor in all the problem/crisis areas of the region. The relationships it has with all parties in Palestine and all parties in Iraq are a considerable resource for peacemakers.
Of course, in the negotiations for a speedy and robust ceasefire for Gaza, Syria is one of the key actors.
I probably shan’t be blogging here much for the next week. But who knows? Who knows what fascinating experiences I might have in Syria?

At IPS: ” Gaza, and Israel’s Wars of Forced Regime Change”

Here is the 35-year-long purview piece on this topic I wrote for IPS this morning. I noted that the current war on Gaza is the sixth war aiming at imposing forced regime change (FRC) on its neighbors that Israel has waged since 1982. Two of the earlier ones were against Palestinian “regimes” and their associated infrastructures: Lebanon 1982 and the OPTs, 2002. Three were against Hizbullah in Lebanon in 1993, 1996, and 2006.
I concluded thus:

    The history of Israel’s FRC wars deserves close study. All have been “wars of choice” in that the “unbearable” situations that Israeli leaders have cited, each time, as giving them “no alternative” but to fight can all be seen as having been very amenable to negotiation — should Israel have chosen that path instead.
    Also, all these wars were planned in some detail in advance, with the Israeli government just waiting for — or even, on occasion, provoking — some action from the other side that they could use as a launch pretext. All have received strong financial, rearming, and political support from the U.S., not least because they were waged in the name of counter-terrorism.
    But the outcomes are important, too. At a purely military level, the two FRC wars against the PLO were the ones that Israel was able to “win”, in terms of being largely able to dismantle the structures it targeted. But the longer term, political-strategic outcomes of both those wars were distinctly counter-productive for Israel since they paved the way for the emergence of much tougher minded and better organised movements.
    By contrast, Israel was unable to win any of its three FRC wars against Hizbullah. In each, Hizbullah withstood Israel’s assault long enough to force it into a ceasefire. All these wars ended up strengthening Hizbullah’s position inside Lebanese politics.
    So how will Israel’s current attempt to inflict forced regime change on the Gaza Palestinians work out? If history is a guide, as it is, then this war will bring about either Hamas’s dismantling or a ceasefire on terms that will lead to (or at least allow) Hamas’s continued political strengthening.
    A dismantling is unlikely, since Hamas’s leadership is located outside Gaza and has links throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds that ensure that annihilation of Hamas in Gaza would have serious global consequences. But if Hamas is dismantled in Gaza, it is most likely to be replaced there — faster or slower — by groups that are even more militant and more Islamist than itself.
    Meantime, the high human costs of the war continue to mount daily.

IPS today also carries a great piece titled Israel Rejected Hamas Ceasefire Offer in December by Gareth Porter. It gives more details of the negotiations carried out in early and mid-December over the possibility and modalities of a renewal of the six-month tahdi’eh that was due to expire December 18.
He writes about–

    Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Centre, who met with Khaled Meshal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor told IPS that Meshal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the ceasefire that had been in effect up to early November “if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza”.
    Pastor said he passeda Meshal’s statement on to a “senior official” in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) the day after the meeting with Meshal. According to Pastor, the Israeli official said he would get back to him, but did not.
    “There was an alternative to the military approach to stopping the rockets,” said Pastor. He added that Israel is unlikely to have an effective ceasefire in Gaza unless it agrees to lift the siege.

Porter has more details. Read the whole thing.
And for the final item on your reading list on the political dimensions of the ongoing tragedy in Gaza, there is this piece from the percipient Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani. I hope you all understand the ironic (or despairing?) reference in its title: “Birth Pangs of a New Palestine.”
Rabbani made this excellent point in his essay:

    It is true, as commonly observed, that Israel’s initial aerial campaign failed to decapitate either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, vanquish them militarily or even prevent the intensification of Palestinian rocket fire. But the observation misses the point. As in 2002, Israel’s first objective was to incapacitate public administration, sever the link between government and people, and isolate the leadership, rather than deal an immediate body blow to militant groups. And as in the West Bank at the height of the second uprising, Israel recognizes that smashing armed groups goes only so far; a sustainable victory requires that the population be cowed into submission and lose faith in its leaders and militants, with its energies redirected toward more mundane projects such as obtaining basic needs and services that the crippled government can no longer provide, and protecting itself from the ensuing chaos in an increasingly competitive environment.
    In the case of Hamas, this goal has additionally meant dismantling — with bombs and missiles launched from land, sea and air — the network of Islamist social, religious and charitable institutions that preceded and laid the foundation for the emergence of the movement as a political and military force in the late 1980s, and have been vital to its ability to establish and maintain a support base in every sector of Palestinian society. Israel concluded that because the movement controls the PA in Gaza and has an autonomous web of institutions that can provide services independently of the government, both types of installation had to be destroyed.

He concludes:

    when all is said and done, two issues rise head and shoulders above the rest: the urgency of beginning the process of reversing Israel’s impunity in its dealings with the Palestinian people, and the equally dire need to address the fundamental issue of occupation, without which ceasefires, sieges and code-named calamities like Operation Cast Lead would be unnecessary.

Obama’s grandfather, the British in Kenya, and Gaza today

Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, became involved with the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after World War 2. Reporters for the London Times recently wrote about H.O. Obama’s experiences in the British-ruled Kenya of those years that

    He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.
    “The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed,” said Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango’s third wife, the woman Mr [president-elect] Obama refers to as “Granny Sarah”.
    Mrs Onyango, 87, described how “white soldiers” visited the prison every two or three days to carry out “disciplinary action” on the inmates suspected of subversive activities.
    “He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down,” she said The alleged torture was said to have left Mr Onyango permanently scarred, and bitterly antiBritish. “That was the time we realised that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies,” Mrs Onyango said.

Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has exhaustively documented the mass incarceration and intimidation campaign the British ran against suspected Kenyan independence activists in her recent book Imperial Reckoning. What she documented there tracked very closely with what Sarah Onyango told the Times reporters about her late husband’s treatment (except that according to Elkins’s documentation, around 150,000 of the Kenyan incarcerees may have ended up dead.)
Elkins also noted that life had become particularly difficult for the Kenyan indigenes, and their anti-British fervor had increased, when the British decided to plant many more white settlers into Kenya after the war, displacing hundreds of thousands of indigenous African farmers from their land and resources and confining them to “reserves” that had pitifully few natural resources that rapidly became depleted as the additional displaced Africans were all trucked in.
In my late-2006 review of Elkins’s book, (PDF here), I noted that the “anti-Mau-Mau” campaign the British carried out, very brutally, in Kenya in the 1950s was a sort of “bridge experience” that linked the many equally brutal campaigns of counter-insurgency that colonial settler regimes around the world had waged for many earlier decades against the indigenous people of the lands where they settled, and some of the later COIN campaigns (Algeria, Vietnam, etc) that constituted, in effect, the “last throes” of settler colonialism.
Elkins’s work was also notable because she had access both to several portions of good British archives and to some living survivors of the concentration camps whom, after learning some local languages, she was able to interview for her work.
But settler colonialism hasn’t gone away, has it? It lives on in the lengthy campaign that Israel maintains to this very day to implant its settlers in occupied Arab lands, stealing the land and associated natural resources from their indigenous owners and forcing the indigenes into tightly controlled “reservations”, penal areas, large open-air concentration camps, and actual prisons. This campaign involves– just as in British Kenya or apartheid South Africa– a ruthless effort to oppress and punish anyone who tries to make a sustained objection to the ongoing projects of settlement aggrandizement.
The London Times is making some of its archives available online these days. On this portal page, you’ll find links to several (generally PDF) contemporary articles and photo-spreads about the anti-Mau-Mau campaign in the 1950s. Many of the accounts look as if they were about Israel in Gaza and the West Bank today. (You can also find a link to an even older Times story, titled, “Gandhi’s Salt March: Extremist Leader in Illegal Salt Collection.” No comment needed.)
President-elect Obama has written eloquently about the “Dreams of his father.” I hope he also takes some time to reflect on the meaning, in today’s world, of the actual experiences of his grandfather.

Israel & Hamas reject ceasefire; details urgently need negotiating

Just because the Security Council calls for an immediate ceasefire, doesn’t mean it happens. What it does mean is that the various portions of the international community are gearing up their capabilities to nail down the exact modalities of the ceasefire, including no doubt all or most of the six points I laid out here.
These negotiations need to be conducted with the utmost speed, given the continuation of terrible suffering among Gaza’s 1.5 million people. It’s a pity the US government is not an active supporter of resolution 1860, since it is the power with the greatest ability to force Israeli compliance with the will of the international community (and the demands of basic humanity.)
Hours after the Security Council passed 1860 by a vote of 14-0, an Israeli Foreign Ministry statement rejected it, saying:

    Israel has acted, is acting and will act only according to its considerations, the security needs of its citizens and its right to self-defense.

With the hostilities continuing last night even after passage of the resolution, Hamas also rejected it. AFP reports their position thus:

    “Even though we are the main actors on the ground in Gaza, we were not consulted about this resolution and they have not taken into account our vision and the interests of our people,” top Hamas official Ayman Taha told AFP.
    “As a result we do not feel concerned by this resolution and when the different parties apply it they will have to deal with those who are in charge on the ground.”
    Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri made similar comments in an interview with Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television on Friday.
    “In the Hamas movement, we do not think that the battle has ended because this resolution was issued, especially after … the continuation of the aggression in Gaza after it was issued,” Abu Zuhri said.
    Israel carried out more than 50 air strikes in Gaza overnight, which Palestinian emergency services said killed 12 civilians.

And so– as in 1982 in Lebanon, as in 1996 in Lebanon, and as in 2006 in Lebanon– the latter stages of the current war will see an intense though indirect negotiation between the two fighting parties over the precise modalities and terms of the ceasefire.
The international negotiators need to act fast and with a real commitment to preserving human life and laying the basis for a deeper peacemaking process to immediately follow. And the rest of us need to keep up our pressure for an immediate ceasefire. One good place to do that is at Avaaz. Another, for US citizens, is by contacting your congressional representatives.
The push for an urgent ceasefire is certainly an effort that, here as anywhere else, should include an international embargo on all supplies of arms to the warring parties so long as the hostilities continue.

Security Council orders ceasefire; No US veto

And so, after 13 days of extremely lethal and quite inhumane Israeli attacks on Gaza, the UN Security Council has finally passed a ceasefire resolution, resolution 1860.
The vote was 14 to zero, with the US abstaining. At least the US didn’t veto it. I guess we should be thankful for small mercies.
But it’s notable that it was not until today that the other powers in the Security Council– including the Europeans, Russia, China, and the Arabs (though they are less powerful)– became so highly motivated by the continually unfolding scenes of carnage in Gaza that they pushed this resolution through to a vote.
I’ve been looking for an authoritative text. The best I can find thus far is the AFP news report linked to above.
It says this:

    The text “stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.”
    It “calls for the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment” and welcomes initiatives aimed at “creating and opening humanitarian corridors and other mechanisms for the sustained delivery of humanitarian aid.”
    Resolution 1860 also “condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism” and urged member states to intensify efforts for arrangements and guarantees in Gaza “to sustain a durable ceasefire and calm, including to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition and to ensure the reopening of the crossing points (into Gaza).”
    It “welcomes the Egyptian initiative (the three-point truce proposal unveiled by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Tuesday) and other regional and international efforts that are under way.”
    Mubarak invited Israel and the Palestinians to Cairo for talks on conditions for a truce, on securing Gaza borders, reopening of its crossings and lifting the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian enclave.

This looks minimally acceptable, though it has six key shortcomings that I can see:

    1. It doesn’t specify a time certain for the hostilities to cease. Great, if “immediate” means “immediate”. But if there’s no time certain specified, the end could drag on a long time.
    2. It doesn’t seem to lay down a fixed timetable for the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, but indicates only that this should follow the cessation of active hostilities. Again, if they linger on inside the Strip, or undertake only a partial withdrawal, or undertake a ‘Scorched Earth’ withdrawal, or sow landmines or leave UXO in the locations they vacate, any such actions would make the ceasefire very fragile indeed.
    3. This ceasefire needs a verification mechanism! I can’t stress this strongly enough. There needs to be some form of international monitoring presence along the border between Israel and Gaza that can monitor that neither side is aggressing or preparing to aggress against the other.
    4. It is excellent– though of course, only a bare minimum of what international humanitarian law requires– that the resolution calls for full humanitarian access to Gaza. However, the Palestinians of Gaza do not want to be treated forever as dependent wards of the international community, entitled only to “humanitarian aid” or “emergency relief”. They, like all the other peoples of the world, have a right to all the dimensions of full social and economic development. That means their territory must be re-opened fully to free interaction with the international economy, whether via Egypt, the Mediterranean, or air communications. They will certainly refuse any return to a status-quo-ante in which their small strip of land would once again be completely encircled by a punitive and very damaging Israeli siege. The AP article says the Egyptians have already started to conduct indirect negotiations between the Israelis and Hamas on re-opening the crossings and other matters. Thes manner and mo0dality of the re-opening is a key issue.
    5. I understand that Israelis have strong concerns about the possibility of Gazans repairing, restoring, or even perhaps upgrading their rocket arsenal and/or starting to develop other means of attacking Israel. There are two complementary ways to meet these concerns. One is by ensuring that Gazans are able to build a new status quo in which they have a valuable and growing community self-interest, that is, by allowing full and unfettered economic and social development in the Strip. The other is by instituting some form of control regime at the entry points between Gaza and the world economy– along the border with Egypt, along the Strip’s coast, and at its rebuilt airport– to ensure that weapons are not shipped in. A supplementary form of international– but certainly not Israeli!– monitoring mechanism might be helpful within Gaza, too. The EU had a role monitoring the Gaza-Egypt border in the failed 2005 withdrawal regime and has indicated a readiness to resume it. But Europeans and everyone else all need to understand that maintaining a policy of “all stick and no carrot” against Gazans is bound to fail. They desperately need an opportunity for real, Strip-wide development and reconnection with the outside world.
    6. Finally, of course nothing can work just for Gaza unless it is linked to a vigorous effort to secure a comprehensive and final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian– and preferably also Israeli-Syria– disputes. The Hamas leaders have given some signs they are willing to work with Abu Mazen on this (though his mandate as PA President runs out Friday.) It would have been great if Resolution 1860 could have said something about the need for the broader final peace.

Well, I imagine (and hope) there will be a rapid flurry of follow-up resolutions. The first thing is for all the guns, rockets, bomber airplanes, etc to fall completely silent, and the next thing is for the Israeli troops to pull out of the Strip and allow the humanitarian actors in to do their still-gruesome job in a situation of relevant calm.
Let’s all hope and pray that this peace holds. It is a cold winter down there in Gaza. Families are starving and dying and scores of thousands of them have had their homes wrecked.
The government of Israel, which gratuitously launched and fought this war of choice, and all those in Israel and far afield who cheered them on, should all be deeply ashamed. But there are numerous points of light within Israeli society. Some of them are the human-rights organizations that have geared up an excellent effort to document the suffering the war has caused as best they can. You can read the blog they are using to compile their findings, here.