Faced with Sderot and Gaza Cutting off Gaza utilities illegal, counterproductive

Haaretz Editorial, 06/07/09. Communities in the western Negev are now enduring their seventh year of rocket attacks. Israel's inability to halt these attacks stems from fear that the cost of a military operation in the Gaza Strip, which the Israel Defense Forces left two years ago, would be higher than the benefits: Many soldiers would be hurt or killed; there would also be Palestinian casualties; international understanding of Israel's need to defend itself would evaporate; and in the end, the operation would turn out to have produced only a lull before the next battle between Israel and the Palestinian organizations - which use various means against it, and not only rockets.

The distress of Israel's government, which is responsible for defending its citizens, periodically gives rise - and with greater force than usual this week - to desperate ideas. One such idea, which is being advocated by Minister Haim Ramon and, more guardedly, by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, is hitting Gaza's water and electricity networks. Stopping the flow of water and electricity is a painful and punishing step, but ostensibly not a fatal one. Its goal is to cause the Palestinian public to pressure Hamas and Islamic Jihad to stop the fire.

This idea is complete nonsense. Factually speaking, cutting off water and electricity can kill. Moreover, there is no proof that making the Palestinian public suffer would make Hamas take pity on it and embark on a cease-fire. On the contrary: Hamas consistently sabotages the flow of essential goods through Gaza's border terminals. What is being presented as a way to avoid war is counterproductive, immoral and illegal.

This last fact is well-known to proponents, who are careful to append footnotes to their proposals regarding the need to obtain legal advice. It is hard to believe that serious people would mouth off first and consult the lawyers only afterward. In reality, they understand that there is no chance of getting legal approval for deliberate harm to civilians at a time when countries, officers and ministers are facing war crimes charges in The Hague. Barak, who as IDF chief of staff during Operation Accountability, drove the population of south Lebanon to flee northward in order to exert pressure on Beirut, surely noticed that last year, the Bush administration forbade Ehud Olmert's government from damaging Lebanon's national infrastructure.

Just a month ago, the cabinet was in an uproar because the High Court of Justice was considering forcing it to honor its commitment to reinforce schools in Sderot. Now, the politicians want the jurists to save them from themselves.

Public posturing will neither solve the problem of the Qassam rockets nor protect the children of Sderot. The current defense priority is "Syria first." Until the danger of war in the North has passed, and in light of the many vacation days during the upcoming holiday season, the government should transfer classes from communities within Qassam range to those farther from Gaza - something it would have to do anyway in the event of a major military operation against the Qassams. It should also warn Gaza's Hamas government that if it does not exercise its responsibility to stop assaults against Israel from the Strip, Israel - at a time of its choosing, and without taking any steps that would necessarily harm civilians - will wage war against all those who attack it from there.

Children of war. IDF own words show it doesn't care if it kills children

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 02/09/07. Again children. Five children killed in Gaza in eight days. The public indifference to their killing - the last three, for example, were accorded only a short item on the margins of page 11 in Yedioth Ahronoth, a sickening matter in itself - cannot blur the fact that the IDF is waging a war against children. A year ago, a fifth of those killed in the "Summer Rain" operation in Gaza were children; during the past two weeks, they comprised a quarter of the 21 killed. If, heaven forbid, children are hurt in Sderot, we will have to remember this before we begin raising hell.

The IDF explains that the Palestinians make a practice of sending children to collect the Qassam launchers. However, in this case, the children killed were not collecting launchers. The first two were killed while collecting carob fruit and the next three - according to the IDF's own investigation - were playing tag. But even if we accept the IDF's claim that there is a general trend of sending children to collect launchers (which has not been proven), that should have brought about an immediate halt to firing at launcher collectors.

But the IDF does not care whether its victims are liable to be children. The fact is that it shoots at figures it considers suspicious, with full knowledge - according to its own contention - that they are liable to be children. Therefore, an IDF that fires at launcher collectors is an army that kills children, without any intention of preventing this. This then is not a series of unfortunate mistakes, as it is being portrayed, but rather reflects the army's contempt for the lives of Palestinian children and its terrifying indifference to their fate.

A society that holds ethical considerations in high regard would at least ask itself: Is it permissible to shoot at anyone who is approaching the launchers, even if we know that some of these people may be small children, lacking in judgment, and thus not punishable? Or are we lifting all restraints on our war operations? Even if we accept the IDF's claims that its sophisticated vision devices do not enable them to distinguish between a 10-year-old boy and an adult, the IDF cannot evade its responsibility for this criminal action. Even if we assumed a completely distorted assumption that anyone who goes near the launchers is subject to death, the fact that children are involved should have changed the rules. Add to this the fact that the firing at launcher collectors has not halted the Qassams, or even reduce their number, and you arrive at another chilling conclusion: The IDF shoots at children to wreak vengeance and punish.

No child in Sderot is more secure as a result of this killing. On the contrary.

Anyone who takes an honest look at the progression of events during the past two months will discover that the Qassams have a context: They are almost always fired after an IDF assassination operation, and there have been many of these. The question of who started it is not a childish question in this context. The IDF has returned to liquidations, and in a big way. And in their wake there has been an increase in Qassam firings.

That is the truth, and they are hiding it from us. When Gabi Ashkenazi and Ehud Barak assumed their positions, the reins were loosened. If Barak were a representative of the political right, perhaps a public outcry would have already been sounded against the IDF's wild actions in Gaza. But everything is permitted to Barak, and even the fact that the victims are children does not matter - not to him and not to the Israeli public.

Yes, the children of Gaza gather around the Qassams. It is practically the only diversion they have in their lives. It is their amusement park. Those who arrogantly preach to their parents "to watch over them" have never visited Beit Hanoun. There is nothing there, except for the filthy alleys and meager homes. Even if it is true that those launching the Qassams are taking advantage of these miserable children (which has yet to be proven), this should not shape our moral portrait. Yes, it is permissible to exercise restraint and caution. Yes, it is not always necessary to respond, especially when the response ends up killing children.

The way to stop the firing of Qassams is not through indiscriminate killing. Every launcher can be replaced. The start of the school year bodes ill, for us and for them. Anyone who truly seeks to stop the firing of Qassams should reach a cease-fire agreement with the current government in Gaza. That is the only way and it is possible. The liquidations, the shelling and the killing of children will work in exactly the opposite direction of what is intended. In the meantime, look what is happening to us and to our army.

Half of IDF's New Combat Officers are Religious

Gil Ronen, IsraelNationalNews.com, 27/08/07. Half of the IDF's young combat officers are religious Jews, according to statistics published as the lead story Sunday in Maariv, Israel's second largest daily newspaper. The report also says that about 40% of the cadets of the most recent Officer Course in Bahad-1, the IDF's officer training school, were religious; this number refers to all officers, as opposed to just combat officers. "This says something very good about the sons of the religious Zionist movement," opines the writer of the piece, senior correspondent Ben Caspit. "They are becoming the IDF's backbone. Their presence in the army is several times larger than it is in the general population."

"They give their entire soul"
"Any way we look at it," he says, "it's about education." It is clear, Caspit states, that "the religious Zionist movement's educational institutions continue to disseminate values, Zionism, Judaism and mission orientation. The religious youth is mission-oriented. [It sets out to] conquer the hilltops, and then to conquer the military service and the officership."

The entry of the religious Zionists into the officer corps began after the Yom Kippur War, says Caspit, when Major-Generals Yair Naveh and Elazar Stern entered service, and "continues with the pre-military academies, which send a sizeable percentage of their graduates to the Officers'

"They do everything willingly, with their entire soul," Caspit says of the religious Zionist soldiers. Alongside them one finds, he claims, many youths from the socialist-agricultural moshav and kibbutz movements, as well as soldiers from new-immigrant and lower-income families who see the military as a chance for upward social mobility.

However, what Caspit refers to as "the First Israel" - the middle and upper classes - is no longer very visible among the officers. More and more of its sons either actively evade service, or opt for what he calls "a gray evasion" – the employment of various tricks to serve less time, serve closer to home, and without endangering themselves. "They find all the ways in the world to fool the system, to see the IDF as some foreign element which is meant to curtail their personal advancement, independent thought, private ambition and other legitimate aspirations of 21st century man."

Caspit sees this trend as a worrying one and calls for urgent action to raise the motivation of non-religious Israelis to serve and excel. He does not specify what this action might be.

Socio-political ramifications
Religious Zionists have often noted, in the course of political debates, that their youth plays a disproportionate role in the IDF, but secular Israelis have usually denied this. The article by Caspit, one of Israel's top journalists and the author of several books, including biographies of Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, can be seen as an admission by a secular Israeli that the religious Zionists have been right on this subject.

The statistics are important for Israeli society because the IDF is seen as the nation's backbone and its pride. Since the State of Israel was founded it has had five native-born Prime Ministers, four of whom were from the military: Yitzchak Rabin, Netanyahu, Barak and Ariel Sharon. Rabin and Barak both served as IDF Chiefs of Staff, Sharon was a Major-General and Netanyahu was an officer in an elite unit that was commanded by his brother, Yoni, who was himself a military hero killed in the rescue of passengers from a hijacked Air France jet in Uganda in 1976. Thus, traditionally, service as combat officers goes hand in hand with leadership potential.

Another reason these statistics are significant is that many religious soldiers have been refusing orders to evict Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. If half of the IDF's new officers are religious, this means that the refusal movement could indeed have a deep deterrent impact on the IDF and government when and if it decides to attempt additional pullouts from territory.