In a recent interview [PDF] with the Middle East Monitor, Colonel (ret.) Desmond Travers of the Irish Army — best known as one of the members of the U.N. commission that produced the Goldstone report — attracted attention for his statement that “the number of rockets that had been fired into Israel in the month preceding their operations was something like two.” Critics of the Goldstone report like Commentary’s David Hazony and Evelyn Gordon have seized on the comment as proof that Travers and the rest of the Goldstone commission are irredeemably biased against Israel; Gordon cites figures [PDF] from the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center showing that over 300 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza during the month of December 2008. (Operation Cast Lead began on Dec. 27.)
As Jerry Haber notes, however, these criticisms are based on a simple misunderstanding. In fact, the “operations” that Travers refers do not commence with the start of Operation Cast Lead on Dec. 27, but rather with Operation Double Challenge on Nov. 4. Double Challenge was an IDF incursion into Gaza that left six Palestinians dead, ending months of calm; because the operation came the day of the U.S. presidential elections, it vanished without a trace in the U.S. media. Paul Woodward explains that the ceasefire was, in fact, functioning quite well until the Israelis broke it on Nov. 4; only after the IDF raid did the number of rocket attacks increase.
Therefore, when Travers speaks of “the month preceding their operations,” he is referring not to December but to October 2008. And how many rockets were fired into Israel in October? According to the very figures [PDF, p. 6] that Gordon cites against Travers, only one. (According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there were two rockets fired in October, and twelve in the four-month stretch from July through October.)
The fact that the ceasefire was actually working quite well in preventing rocket fire into southern Israel is one reason that we should be skeptical of the claim that Israel had no choice but to use military force to prevent the rocket attacks. (This is not, of course, to deny that the rocket attacks constituted war crimes in their own right.) If Israel’s primary goal were simply to end the rocket attacks, it could have worked to maintain the ceasefire (or better still, lifted the siege of Gaza). Why, then, did Israel choose to violate it instead? I suspect that the Israeli government, wary of the incoming Obama administration, believed that the blank check it enjoyed during the Bush years was coming to an end, and was determined to make one last sustained effort to root out the Hamas government before it did.
Nick
February 15, 2010 @ 1:20 pm
Thank you for the well-tailored brief, Dainel.
Readers may also wish to read Normal Finkelstein’s thoughts on the reason of the timing of operation Cast Lead http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein01282009.html
- By the way antiwar.com has printed this article with the date of Operation Double Challenge as “Nov.5″ in both sentences. You may wish to inform them of that typo.
Bernard
February 15, 2010 @ 5:25 pm
“The fact that the ceasefire was actually working quite well in preventing rocket fire into southern Israel is one reason that we should be skeptical of the claim that Israel had no choice but to use military force to prevent the rocket attacks.”
The reasoning in support of this claim is murky at best. The target of Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip on Nov 4-5 (Operation Double Challenge) was not rocket fire but a tunnel Hamas was building 250m from the border fence for the purpose of trying to abduct Israeli soldiers positioned on the other side of the fence. So the fact that only two rockets were fired into Israel during the preceding month is not relevant. Israel was entitled to respond to other hostile acts as well.
Moreover, from the end of Operation Double Challenge until the end of the Tahadiya (Nov. 4 – Dec. 19, 2008), there were 170 mortars, 255 Qassams, and 5 Grads fired upon Israel’s civilian population centers. And from the end of the Tahadiya (Dec. 19, 2009) until the beginning of Operation Cast Lead (Dec. 27, 2008), a period of little more than a week, there were approximately 300 mortars and rockets fired onto Israel.
Once Hamas announced that it was not prepared to renew the ceasefire and commenced firing rockets, Israel had no reasonable alternative except to use military force.
The question one should ask is, Why was Hamas not prepared to renew the ceasefire?
Jon Harrison
February 15, 2010 @ 6:58 pm
I’m not sure if how exact Bernard’s figures are, but it was certainly my impression that a considerable amount of ordnance was being dumped on Israel in the weeks prior to the launching of Cast Lead. The operation itself was clearly overkill and some of its aspects were probably criminal, but there was more provocation than Travers and Luban seem prepared to admit. And I say this as one who sees Israel as an illegitimate, colonial entity. But human beings have a right to defend themselves, surely? One shouldn’t expect the Israel to do nothing when the other side is lobbing mortar rounds and firing rockets into its citizens’ backyards.
In other words, while I question Israel’s right to exist, and while I think its measures in Cast Lead were excessive, I quite understand it attacking those who were attacking it. I live on the Vermont-New York border. If New Yorkers were bombarding my backyard (no matter how just their cause), you can be damn sure I’d retaliate.
Thomas Immanuel Steinberg
February 15, 2010 @ 8:16 pm
Have a look at the official statistics published by the Israeli government about morsar shelling and rocket fire here, p. 6
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/ipc_e007.pdf
Carroll
February 15, 2010 @ 10:50 pm
I don’t know for a fact but I would guess several were considered for Goldstone’s job and his being Jewish was a factor in his favor..as the UN is constantly accused of anti semitism… they assumed he would have no anti Israel leanings and therefore the report would not be smeared as anti Israel or anti semitic.
Now evidently.. it is impossible for the uber zionist and Israelis to conceive of a Jew who could be objective and ethical and put aside any personal ideology in favor of the law and truth.
Which goes to show there is no way you can, and no point in, arguing it with the Israel right or wrong crowd.
What’s the old saying?..don’t bother me with the facts my mind’s made up.
stevieb
February 16, 2010 @ 10:25 am
I see the paid help is out in force. Against the “colonial entity” – but for the massacre of more than 600 women and children and 1000 civilians and mass destruction of civilian infrastructure. Not to mention that it was Israel’s obligation, according to the terms of the cease-fire, to lift the siege and allow food and water into Gaza. Didn’t happen. Or did you forget that part? I’m guessing you didn’t forget…
Those were crimes against humanity, my friend. And international law allows for those under intense and brutal military occupation to resist such illegal actions. And those rockets are all the Palestinians had – and even they were the equivalent of crude moltav cocktails. Israel had no right to attack a defenseless civilian population when it didn’t fulfill it’s cease fire agreement.
Or did you forget that about your ‘colonial entity’?
stevieb
February 16, 2010 @ 10:31 am
And why post drivel from the Israeli government who have been shown, time and time again, to simply lie about it’s operations against the Palestinians?
And then allow it’s million dollar, internet propaganda campaigners to infiltrate progressive websites and sow those seeds of doubt?
If that’s not you – my apologies. And if not, why not?
There’s money in your lies….
sdemetri
February 16, 2010 @ 11:29 am
Here is a fairly cogent analysis of what was fired into Israel in the months preceding Nov 4:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kanwisher/reigniting-violence-how-d_b_155611.html
It is pretty clear, tunnel and alleged kidnapping plan notwithstanding, that Hamas was maintaining the ceasefire to the best of its ability and Cast Lead should be viewed more as an aggressive move rather than defensive. The tunnel and alleged kidnapping plot bears all the hallmarks of a provocation.
Jon Harrison
February 16, 2010 @ 7:31 pm
I don’t support a Jewish state in Palestine and I oppose ALL U.S. aid to Israel. I want no involvement with Israel because I believe it hurts American interests. I frankly don’t give a damn about anybody in the Middle East. It’s a region important only for its energy resources; culturally it’s been a backwater for centuries. I don’t wish the peoples of the region ill; I just want nothing to do with them beyond having trading relations with them.
I can tell you that my views have caused me to be attacked in The Forward and called an anti-semite (which I’m not) in letters to the editor of a magazine I write for. I have no brief for the Israelis. But clearly, my friend, you’ve never been under fire, or experienced someone shooting at your children. If someone’s shooting at my children, I retaliate. I agree that the Israeli retaliation was disproportionate. But believe me, if someone starts shooting at my family, I will make every attempt to kill him.
I condemn operation Cast Lead as overkill and in some respects illegal. But I don’t blame anyone for retaliating against someone who’s shooting at him. That’s a separate issue from the question of whether Israel should have been created to begin with.
Gabby
February 16, 2010 @ 8:53 pm
You are spot on.
There was a chart of how rockets had originated from Gaza before the invasion on the Israeli defense website. After the chart made the rounds on the internet linking back to their website, one of two charts were deleted. The chart that was left was harder to read.
And now the digging under the bridge to the Al-Aqsa mosque has been accelerated. The Palestinians suffer daily provocation.
scott
February 17, 2010 @ 8:28 am
Yes, those tunnels can really move at breakneck speeds. It’s certainly providential that the Israelis have F22s without mach speeds those tunnels could have stretched to North Korea by now.
Jon, your arguments here are very weak. I suppose you would turn to pulp the chicken for fluttering about after his neck is broken. The spasms of desperation that represents the Palestinian resistance are no threat to Israel. Nor were niggers at lunch counters or on white designated zones a threat to this country, though we killed thousands of black men, women and children and anyone who dare show them any empathy.
Your Bullshit rationale Jon, ignores our own history here. I’ve seen Jim Crow. I’ve seen the saccharine hospitality, hidden bitterness, smallness and viciousness. You ignore this and yes, it can seem easy to put an uppity negro in his place. I know why the caged bird beats his wing. Jon, I suppose the caged birds should cease their chirping, fluttering and thrashing. Why can’t these birds accept their fate?
Jon Harrison
February 23, 2010 @ 10:29 am
Scott, it’s not that my arguments are weak, it’s that you fail to appreciate the subtleties of my thought!
scott
February 25, 2010 @ 8:09 am
“If someone’s shooting at my children, I retaliate. I agree that the Israeli retaliation was disproportionate. But believe me, if someone starts shooting at my family, I will make every attempt to kill him.”
This logic here is totally circular. By this rubric and facts that we’d both agree to, the Palestinians have every right to fire at the Israelis ever since the Nakba. You’ve made the eye for an eye argument.
One can’t argue for even handedness in a master/slave relationship. Only by humanizing the slave and dethroning the master can this relationship be reconciled. But again, the humanity of the Palestinians or the Israeli unwillingness to grant equal status to Palestinians as Jews is the core of the problem.
My father is a condemnation atty. I a real estate appraiser by training. Have the Palestinians gotten the fair compensation of “eminent domain” that they would enjoy and expect under Common Law? The “right of return” should be compared to conventional “eminent domain” tort standards.
If Palestinians are willing to sell their land to Jews, Pigs, or Chinamen I don’t care. If Israel were formed democratically, I wouldn’t oppose it. But, “Oppressing, Dominating, Starving and Dominating and entire people” is flatly wrong. Quoting the Refusniks, is there any new news regarding that movement?
Jon Harrison
February 25, 2010 @ 1:56 pm
I actually agree with you. I’m simply putting myself in another man’s shoes. If I had stolen my land from the New Yorkers down the road, I’d be in the wrong. But if I’m going to stay here anyway, and the New Yorkers start shooting at me, I’m gonne shoot back. My argument was an abstract one rather than a commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. You read this blog, and my comments upon it. You know I consider Israel to be an illegitimate, colonial entity. But if I were an Israeli, and guilt didn’t drive me to leave, I’d attack those attacking me, rather than sit around waiting to be killed. Doesn’t mean that I’d be “in the right.” That wasn’t the point I was discussing.
I don’t believe in an eye for eye. I believe in killing the other guy first.
scott
February 26, 2010 @ 2:07 am
I wish all wars were fought as we fight here, in earnest, in fun, and in words.