Response to Rising Violence in Israel and Gaza

Following Havdallah this evening, I switched on my computer in order to read the latest news regarding Israel.  I brought my laptop downstairs to the library and, with Judy's help, reported the latest news aloud to the group of my housemates who were playing Halo.  For those of you unfamiliar with the situation, on Wednesday, Hamas fired rockets from Gaza, which set off sirens even in Tel Aviv, Israel retaliated by bombing rocket launcher sites, and killing Ahmed al-Jaabari, head of Hamas's Izz ad-Din al-Qassam military wing. (Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said that targeting Tel Aviv would "exact a price that the other side will have to pay.")  The Israeli attack killed five other Palestinians (including a seven-year-old girl) and injured approximately forty others.  For a brief overview of Israel's and Hamas's operations as of Thursday evening, I turn to the Associated Press: "The Israeli army said 300 targets were hit in Gaza, including more than 130 militant rocket launchers. It said more than 270 rockets had struck Israel since the start of the operation, with its Iron Dome interceptor system shooting down more than 130 rockets bound for residential areas.  Expecting days or more of fighting and almost inevitable civilian casualties, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets in Gaza advising residents to stay away from Hamas and other militants."
Over Shabbat, a Palestinian-fired rocket set off sirens near Jerusalem, although nobody was injured; this is the first time since 1970 that any Palestinian rocket has fallen near Israel's political capital.  (That is worth repeating: in the year that the last time a rocket landed near Jerusalem, the United States was engaged in the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon was president, my parents were younger than I am now, the Beatles disbanded, Ray Davies wrote "Lola.")  Although rocket attacks may have become familiar to residents of towns like Sderot may have become accustomed to, they don't usually disturb residents of Israel's political capital -- Jerusalem typically has other problems to deal with.  According to one report, Hamas claims to have been aiming to hit the Knesset.  Since the violence began on Wednesday, 492 Palestinian missiles have struck Israel, while the Iron Dome defense system shot down another 245 (about 1/3 of incoming rockets, in other words).  Not all of these Palestinians missiles are from Hamas itself: some are shot by various militant Palestinian Salafist groups. Many of the long-range strikes are carried out using Iran-designed and -funded Fajr-5 missiles, which have a strike range of 75km (see figure above, courtesy of the IDF).  There are several false reports circulating regarding some of these missile hits, including that rockets have struck three IDF bases.  To my knowledge, this is incorrect.

Israel Air Strike in Gaza City, 17 November 2012.

More than 200 Israeli airstrikes struck Gaza Saturday, with a total death count of just under about 43 or so Palestinians, just over half of them militants, with many more casualties.  Property destruction has also been significant: among the buildings destroyed are the Palestinian Prime Minister's office, and a police compound.  The Palestinian Interior Ministry was also a target, but, as far as I know, it was not destroyed.
Representatives from both Egypt and Tunisia have sent representatives to Gaza in signs of Arab solidarity, and Arab countries are planning to convene in Cairo.  Meanwhile, President Barack Obama and Germany's Angela Merkel have affirmed their support for Israel, and have condoned its actions.  "It is Hamas in Gaza that is responsible for the outbreak of the violence"  In Turkey, Prime Minister Erdogan criticizes Israel for having used disproportionate force; I can't find news on the subject from France any earlier than this video from Le Monde, which I think is from Thursday, in which Hollande says that he has taken "Toutes les initiatives pour eviter ce dechainement de violence [All measures to avoid this unleashing of violence]," saying that he had telephoned both Netanyahu and told him that, although he recognized Israel's need to defend itself, advised him not to provoke what could become a growing cycle of violence.  Hollande also spoke to Morsi, telling him to use all possible influence to prevent any further "operations;" without taking clear sides, he seems to want everyone to stop shooting, in the hopes that this will prevent something truly tragic, i.e. war, from breaking out.  (Meanwhile, the French Foreign Minister seems more openly sympathetic with the Palestinian cause, stating that "it would be a catastrophe if there is an escalation in the region. Israel has the right to security but it won't achieve it through violence. The Palestinians also have the right to a state.")
Contrary to Hollande's hopes, all signs indicate that the IDF is preparing for a ground operation.
Seeing this possibility, some commentators have pointed out the similarities to the Gaza War of 2008-9.  Some of you may have read the New York Times article criticizing Israel for not changing its diplomatic and military strategies from 2008 to take into account the political developments in the Arab World, namely the Arab Spring.  The article depicts Israel's approach to all situations as heavy-handed militarism. So does this article, blaming both Israel and the United States for ignorance of a changing situation.

A Hamas officer guarding the smoking ruins
of the former Palestinian Prime Minister's office in Gaza.

Let's review an important figure from the last war: 1,400 dead Palestinians, and 13 dead Israelis, over a period of three weeks.  We all know that no matter how high the body count rises on either side of this conflict, there will still not be peace, and rockets will still fly every week, maybe every day, over the border into Israel.  The Israeli Army is too well-trained and effective for the Palestinians to win in open combat, and Hamas's rocket-launching sites are too spread out for Israel to end rocket fire with anything short of the operations we've seen unfolding this week.  According to a former Israeli official who had been involved in the Gaza War, Hamas "will not stop until enough Israelis are killed or injured to create a sense of equality or balance.  If a rocket falls in the middle of Tel Aviv, that will be a major success. But this government will go back at them hard. I don’t see this ending in the next day or two.”  I think that we may very easily see another war, but not one that end with Israel significantly more secure; any operation, no matter how effective, will probably just reset the clock for a few years.  Ho Chi Minh, commenting to the United States on the futility of its operations in Vietnam, famously said "you can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours.  But even at these odds, you will lose and we will win."  Entirely different situation, but similar concept: no matter what the ratio of casualties is (and I do not foresee any military operation Israeli casualties outnumbering non-Israeli casualties), it cannot put an end to the political conflict.

The Iron Dome defense system in action, shooting down
a Palestinian rocket on Saturday.

As for me, my most pressing concern is the safety of all of my friends in Israel, especially those currently serving in the IDF, or likely to be called up on reserve.  My next concern is for all of the Israeli and Palestinian civilians who constantly live in fear of their own lives, and those of their loved ones.  Israel has been hit by nearly 500 rockets in the past days, several of which have threatened its (rough) equivalents of Washington, D.C. (Jerusalem) and New York City (Tel Aviv).

In all of this,  I cannot help but take a pro-Israel stance.  I would very much like to believe that this is a result of my rational understanding of the facts.  It could be the result of what is undeniably my strong emotional attachment to Israel and Israelis.  It seems to me that Israel has a right to defend itself, if that means bombing rocket factories in Gaza, setting up checkpoints in the West Bank, and destroying Iranian nuclear facilities.  What is upsetting is that so many Palestinian civilians have died in the process; many more will likely die in the next days, weeks, months, years, and, my pessimism tempts me to say, decades.  (As the picture to the right indicates, even a Palestinian partisan would have difficulty attributing the collateral death of civilians in the destruction of missile launch sites to Israeli aggression/vengefulness/carelessness.)   I do not think that we will see an end to this conflict soon.  Short of a Messianic arrival (it doesn't matter in accordance to whose beliefs), I can't envision a lasting peace emerging any time soon.
Another brief word about assassinations and the political nature of scientific institutions.  Many criticize Mossad for its assassinations of Iranian nuclear physicists, many of them involving motorcycles and sticky bombs.  Some of these scientists were professors who taught courses at Iranian Universities.  As the son of a scientist, and the student (and friend?) of many others, it is distressing to think that an academic could not drive to work without fearing that his car will be sabotaged before he can reach his classroom.  Let me say this now, loud and clear: scientists, like it or not, are political entities, just like the rest of us, whether we are students, soldiers, actuaries, educators, lobbyists, accountants, investors, union organizers, salespeople, or artists (yes, that's right -- all art is political, and even the very belief that art should be for art's sake alone is itself a political statement).  Membership in the scientific community, from oldest times, involves politics, and I don't just mean intra-departmental squabbles.  To name just a few famous examples, Aristotle proved with his ethical calculus that Alexander deserved to be ruler of a massive empire; Galileo named four of Jupiter's moons after his patrons, the Medicis; Darwin was an abolitionist, and worked tirelessly to emphasize the unity of the human species.  All of these scientists proved that their research, however much it contributed to human knowledge, did not exist in a political vacuum; rather it, was shaped for (and funded by) political actors and movements of their own times.  Scientific training does not qualify one for exemption from the goals and results of one's work, especially if those results are easily foreseeable. To quote a great writer reflecting on scientists' complicity in nuclear weapons research: "the fact is that a mere training in one or more of the exact sciences, even combined with very high gifts, is no guarantee of a humane or skeptical [sic] outlook. The physicists... all feverishly and secretly working away at the atomic bomb, are a demonstration of this."  So wrote George Orwell in 1945, reflecting on the nuclear politics of his own time.  The same could be said today: anyone who knows that his life's work could be used to carry out his nation's overt goal to wipe another country off of the face of the map makes a very clear political choice, and cannot claim any sort of "intellectual exemption" for his actions.
I strongly suspect that all of my friends and relations who read this will be at least slightly offended.  Sam Law will probably think that I am a brainwashed belligerent Zionist who supports a system of military occupation and state-sanctioned terror.  Lazar will likely criticize me for erring too far on the side of supporting Palestinian terrorists.  To be honest, I don't care.This post is dedicated to all of those dedicated members of the IDF out there.  Good luck out there.
~JD