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From the Jerusalem Post

July 23, 2006 by

Normally I avoid reprinting other people’s work, but this article is too important to miss. It is reprinted from the Jerusalem Post online edition (www.jpost.com)

Jul. 22, 2006 22:49 | Updated Jul. 23, 2006 19:05
The predictable condemners
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

The Hizbullah and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists exploit human rights and the media in their attacks on democracies.

By hiding behind their own civilians the Islamic radicals issue a challenge to democracies: Either violate your own morality by coming after us and inevitably killing some innocent civilians, or maintain your morality and leave us with a free hand to target your innocent civilians.

This challenge presents democracies such as Israel with a lose-lose option, and the terrorists with a win-win option.

There is one variable that could change this dynamic and present democracies with a viable option that could make terrorism less attractive as a tactic: The international community, the anti-Israel segment of the media and the so called “human rights” organizations could stop falling for this terrorist gambit and acknowledge that they are being used to promote the terrorist agenda.

Whenever a democracy is presented with the lose-lose option and chooses to defend its citizens by going after the terrorists who are hiding among civilians, this trio of predictable condemners can be counted on by the terrorists to accuse the democracy of “overreaction,” “disproportionality” and “violations of human rights.”

In doing so, they play right into the hands of the terrorists, causing more terrorism and more civilian casualties on both sides. If instead this trio could, for once, be counted on to blame the terrorists for the civilian deaths on both sides, this tactic would no longer be a win-win situation for the terrorists.

IT SHOULD BE obvious by now that Hizbullah and Hamas actually want the Israeli military to kill as many Lebanese and Palestinian civilians as possible. That is why they store their rockets underneath the beds of civilians; why they launch their missiles from crowded civilian neighborhoods and hide among civilians. They are seeking to induce Israel to defend its civilians by going after them among their civilian “shields.” They know that every civilian they induce Israel to kill hurts Israel in the media and the international and human rights communities.

They regard these human shields as shahids – martyrs – even if they did not volunteer for this lethal job. Under the law, criminals who use human shields are responsible for the deaths of the shields, even if the bullet that kills them came from the gun of a policeman.

Israel has every self-interest in minimizing civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists have every self-interest in maximizing them – on both sides. Israel should not be condemned for doing what every democracy would and should do: taking every reasonable military step to stop the terrorists from killing their innocent civilians.

NOW THAT some of those who are launching rockets at Israeli cities have announced they have new surprises in store for Israel that may include chemical and biological weapons, the stakes have gotten even higher.

What would Israeli critics regard as “proportioned” to a chemical or biological attack? What would they say if Israel tried to preempt such an attack and, in the process, killed some civilians? Must a democracy absorb a first strike from a weapon of mass destruction before it fights back? Would any other democracy be expected to do that?

The world must come to recognize the cynical way in which terrorists exploit civilian casualties. They launch anti-personnel rockets designed to maximize enemy civilian casualties, then they cry “human rights” when their own civilians – behind whom they are deliberately hiding – are killed by the democracies in the process of trying to prevent further acts of terrorism

The very idea that terrorists who use women and children as suicide bombers against other women and children shed crocodile tears over the deaths of civilians they deliberately put in harm’s way gives new meaning to the word “hypocrisy.” We all know that hypocrisy is a tactic of the terrorists, but it is shocking that others fall for it and become complicit with the terrorists.

Let the blame fall where it belongs: on the terrorists who deliberately seek to kill enemy civilians and give their democratic enemies little choice but to kill some civilians behind whom the terrorists are hiding.

Those who condemn Israel for killing civilians – who are used as human shields and swords for the terrorists – actually cause more civilian deaths and make it harder for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.

HOW THE WORLD reacts to Israel’s current military efforts to protect its citizens will have a considerable impact on future Israeli steps toward peace. Prior to the recent kidnappings and rocket attacks the Israeli government had announced its intention to engage in further withdrawals from large portions of the West Bank.

But how can Israel be expected to move forward with any plan for withdrawal if all it can expect in return is more terrorism – what the terrorists regard as “land for rocket launchings” – and more condemnation when it seeks to protect its civilians?

The writer is a Professor of Law at Harvard and the author of Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways.

Filed Under: Israel

Ups and downs

July 23, 2006 by

It is fascinating to watch people coping with this war. In addition to the cookers and the cleaners, there are the watchers (of the news) and the listeners (to the news) and the avoiders (of all news) and those, like me, who regulate the amount of news they can tolerate on an hour by hour basis. There are some days that I am with the news almost constantly and others that I spend very little time listening or watching. And I believe that each and every person has his or her own way of coping.

But, strangely enough, life goes on, albeit in a sadder tone.

Today I took my daughter to Raanana to make a shiva call at the home of a family whose son, a major in the Israeli Army, had been killed in the fierce battle with Hezbollah that took place north of Avivim. His story, like so many others, is tragic. He had married only three weeks ago. He and his wife had just begun to set up their home. The son of Anglo immigrants, he seems to have been someone who everyone loved. My daughter was visiting because she had been a coworker of his mother.

While in Raanana, we took a walk on the tree lined main street which was bustling with traffic and populated by stores filled with wares that spilled out onto the sidewalk. People were sitting in cafes and people were walking through the street as if it were just a normal day. I remarked to my daughter that had I taken a videotape of our walk today, no one would have believed that things here are so normal.

Of course in the North they are anything but normal. By this morning, before the day’s barrage of rockets, Nahariya, a lovely seaside town where we spent a weekend this past winter, had sustained damage to 500 buildings. And that is only in one town. Hezbollah has hit in or around every town in the North of Israel.

So there is simultaneously this sense of things being fine and of pain and loss and destruction. And this week we added into the mix one more factor.

On Friday July 14, our youngest son and his wife presented us with a darling new granddaughter. This past Thursday she was given the name “Shira”. We pray that she will grow up in a country that will be safe and secure and where none will make her afraid.

Filed Under: Family life, Israel, Ramblings

Disproportionate mercy

July 21, 2006 by

Today, as I was watching CNN (we get CNN Europe, which, I am told differs from CNN in the USA and I hope that is correct) I became outraged. One of the talking heads was talking about the middle east and all of the terrible things that are happening here. She (I think it was a she; I at first tried to repress this because I didn’t want to become hypertensive) was talking about how people were affected and spoke of “the refugees from Lebanon arriving in Syria with tales of horror” and the Israelis “watching missiles land.” Now let’s see: I suppose the woman in Nahariya who saw her husband approaching the shelter where she and her small children were taking refuge and then saw him be so obliterated by a direct missile hit that there were only a few small pieces left could be said to have watched a missile land. That is indeed true. But I, as a somewhat compassionate person would be tempted to think of that as a tale of horror.

But wait…. I have forgotten something…. he was a Jew. When Jews are killed, well, that’s OK. When arabs are killed, that’s horror.

Filed Under: Israel

View from the shelter

July 20, 2006 by

This is a piece written a couple of days ago by someone who is on an email list in Israel. Although I don’t normally post other people’s articles, her personal experience is something I wanted to share with you. I am most grateful for her permission to use this.
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I’ve kinda lost track of days and such, but since I work at a hospital in Safed, I decided to stay here for a couple of nights. I have everything I need and the miklat [shelter] is much nicer than the one in the neighborhood. Sunday nite the hospital had a near-hit. A katyusha fell at the periphery of the main building. There was no structural damage to speak of, but tons of broken glass. 14 staff were treated for shock. I was either under my dining room table or in my local miklat in Karmiel at the time, but not everyone was so “lucky.”

The miracle is that the attack took place at about 10-11 p.m., so the public areas were empty, and the heads of departments had already taken the precaution of moving patients from the north to the south side of the building, and mommies and babies had been relocated to the day surgery center in the bowels of the main building. All but one window in the Pediatrics dept were blown out by the force of the blast as were most of those in the surgical ward, the waiting rooms, and others.

A 13 year old boy recovering from surgery for a ruptured spleen and internal bleeding was watching t.v. in the dining room when the blast took place and was hit in the head by flying glass, suffering a nasty, deep gash. No brain injuries, but lots of stitches. A patient in the orthopedics dept, recovering from shrapnel wounds and the subsequent surgeries, was thrown out of his bed. He said he could feel the whole building move.

Sunday and yesterday (Tuesday) I heard loud booms and saw the aftermath of rockets which had fallen across the wadi, some hundreds of meters away, but scarey enough to see out of your office window…

I met with 4 groups of reporters yesterday (they’ve discovered us!) Most of them were really professional—-but when the chickie from CBS called to make an appointment for 8 PM and asked if there was any chance that they could interview a patient who had been hurt by this attack (yes), and wanted to know whether — by chance he might be from New York (nooooo — Safed by way of Morocco), she decided to come but not to interview. “I really wanted to talk to someone from NY, or at least an American,” she said. I told her that I was sorry that I hadn’t received more notice so that I could have arranged to have an American wounded for her… It went right over her head.

BTW, they showed up at 10:30.

Anyhow, I’m tired and testy. Slept in the cardiology ‘benoni’ room [step-down unit] with 4 other women, one of whom sounded just like a diesel truck warming up on a cold winter’s day. I don’t do well on hospital mattresses (and who does?), so I was up at 3:30 again. But it was nice to have other people around whom I know. And since I have a vacation in the US scheduled for a few weeks, perhaps I will catch up on sleep there.

Something I didn’t anticipate was that my grandkids are watching the news on t.v. in America. They are 12 and 7. I had no idea they watched the news or that they had any understanding. Apparently they are very upset and the 7 year old just wants to hold his Bugs Bunny. And that’s from yo-many thousands of miles away. The kids here are really suffering, as most of you parents must know. I know of two families among my acquaintances who had to go as far south as they could just so the children would stop having panic attacks.

This is really (fill in your expletive), this massive, indiscriminate bombardment of innocents.

Stay safe,
Sylvia

Filed Under: Israel

Another day

July 19, 2006 by

It’s another surrealistic day in Israel. All day long Hezbollah has been lobbing rockets our way as well as mortars. They have hit pretty much every place in the North that people live. At times they were firing over 70 an hour. Most, thank G-d, landed in open fields starting fires, but not harming homes or people. However, some did damage to livestock—one hit alone killed tens of cattle. And the constant firing means that farmers can’t tend their livestock or their crops. However, once again, we paid the highest price with two soldiers killed in a firefight and three Israeli Arabs killed in Nazareth.

Shimon Peres, a well-known dove, former friend and confidante of Yassir Arafat, said today, “What does Hezbollah want? We have nothing that belongs to them. We have not threatened them.” He understands the irrationality of their hate, a hate so great that they put all of Israel and all of Lebanon in danger. I called my daughter up this evening and told her to make a note of this day. Chaim Ramon, a man whose opinions have been predictably diametrically opposed to mine was saying exactly what I believe—that this is a battle we HAVE to win. This is a battle that the Western world needs us to win. We are the front line in the terror war and we can’t afford to cave for our own sakes and for the sake of the rest of the freedom loving nations.

Our days here in Modi’in are fairly calm. It’s quiet outside and there is a warm breeze. At the health club this afternoon, I biked while watching our soldiers firing mortars and heard the reporters speaking as katyushas landed around them. I heard about the terror alert that paralyzed the center of the country until the terrorist and his explosives were located and the attack was prevented. I saw the battle in Nablus around the Mukata, I heard about the Kassams being fired from Gaza and heard about the man who died from a heart attack after a Kassam landed nearby. His brother had been killed in a terror attack about a year ago.

We pray for our soldiers, for those in the line of fire, for our leaders to continue to lead us with wisdom, and for G-d’s help in this just cause.

If you are interested in getting a newscast from Israel in English, this URL will be helpful to you. Thanks for all of the public and private support. I could never tell you how much it means to us.

Filed Under: Israel, Ramblings

From the home front

July 19, 2006 by

Another day has passed and with it more rockets landing from Lebanon. For those who are worried about us, I need to recount a phone conversation I had tonight. Our daughter’s in-laws live in Haifa and I spoke with her mother-in-law tonight, again offering to house them for as long as they would like to spend here. She answered that they are fine. They feel safe. They have been in their house reading, listening to music, watching television, taking advantage of the time at home to get things done. They are fine. They are not worried.

Of course, we in the center of the country feel safe and confident, but it is particularly reassuring to me that those in the line of fire are just as confident.

And a personal note: Our youngest granddaughter who will reach the ripe old age of a week on Friday and still has not been named, is very adorable. We enjoyed visiting her and her siblings on Tuesday. And it felt very nice to pick up our younger daughter and her husband who returned in the middle of the night from a trip overseas. It’s good to have them back home.

Filed Under: Family life, Israel, Ramblings

What a people!

July 17, 2006 by

What a people we are! Today our enemies attacked firing kassams in the south (in Ashqelon and Sderot), in the center (a terrorist was caught in downtown Jerusalem carrying a bomb in preparation for an attack) and firing katyushas in the north (Haifa, Safed, Meiron, Kiryat Shmona, Acre, Tiberias, Talal, Julis, Abu Snan, Kafr Yassif and other towns across the north) and yet we hold strong. One after another the government ministers, the mayors, the police all report the same thing: our people are saying “stay the course” “we can do this” “we are with you.” In Haifa where one building took a direct hit, the owner of the apartment said, “This is what we are involved in and this is part of it.”

I still don’t understand anyone’s criticism. Is there any possibility that these attacks on any other civilized country would be met with as much restraint as our forces are using? If the US were attacked on two of its borders and were a terrorist caught on the same day in Washington, do you really think it would absorb the blow? If they are targeting homes in our cities, what would be a proportional response? Targeting homes in their cities? When the Israel air force went after a civilian area that houses Hezbollah’s supplies and infrastructure, they dropped leaflets hours before warning civilians to leave the area so they wouldn’t be harmed. And the world says we use disproportional responses!

They can never defeat us. This is a people like none other. We are one large family. Yes, we squabble when things are going well, but comes a crisis and we truly are one.

Filed Under: Israel, Ramblings

Living through the war

July 16, 2006 by

This past shabbat, my husband and I went to the home of friends. When we arrived, our hostess warned us that she had made a lot of food since it was her way of coping with the war. On Saturday afternoon, one of her friends came over and mentioned that she was stuffed because she had made lots of food as her way of coping with the war.

Never having had the urge, I couldn’t relate to making food as a coping mechanism. I would have imagined that my main coping mechanism was watching or listening to the news, but today I found myself moving furniture, scrubbing the floor, and washing- scrubbing the handles on my kitchen cabinets. I began to realize that it was another way that I had of dealing with this war.

And this war isn’t a very easy thing to conceptualize. On the one hand, the simple truth is that we have enemies that desire my death and the death of all of my children, grandchildren, friends, and neighbors. They would enjoy seeing my blood running in the street. They target apartment houses, soccer fields, schools, pizza restaurants, and shopping centers so much desiring blood that they praise those who blow themselves up to accomplish their goals. They have never lied about how much of our country they want (all of it). So that should be simple.

But it isn’t, because we as Jews and Israelis don’t have the same values. I don’t know one person in this country who wouldn’t want a solution that allows us to live and let live. Were the Arabs to say to us (and mean it) “we just want to live our lives, raise our children, plant our gardens, go to theater and concerts and movies with you Jews (or separately from you Jews)” there is no one I know on the left or right who would have a problem with it. Land could be shared. Municipalities could have more or less autonomy. All of it could be solved, but we need them to care about their own lives more than they care about ruining ours.

We want simply to live. We have so much to give. When we left Gaza, the Arabs who had been working with us in agriculture begged us to stay. They had good jobs and were providing for their families. They knew that what we left would be destroyed by the other Arabs—and it was.

So we experience sadness and desperation and the pain of losing our beautiful young soldiers and sailors and the men and women and children killed in this war. But we also experience something amazing: the magnificence of the Israelis. We see kindness that is unparalleled… people taking in people they have never met so that they will be safe; singers performing for people who are in shelters; television programs that exude love and caring for our people; people collecting toys and games for the children who are in shelters; others collecting toiletries and snack foods for our soldiers. I have never seen such kindness. This nation pulls together as one. It reminds me of the rhetorical question in the liturgy “who is like your people Israel?” At times like these, they are magnificent.

But the kindness doesn’t stop there. I have received emails from many many of the people we know in the States telling us that they are thinking of us, praying for us, supporting us, standing with us. There is such kindness in the world. May it help us defeat the hate.

Filed Under: Israel, Ramblings, Spirituality

I’ve had it!

July 14, 2006 by

OK, the world has offically gotten on my last nerve.

I won’t go into ancient history that would affirm that this land has been the land of the Jews since Abraham. I won’t expound modern history that would show that there was no such thing as the “Palestinian people” until after 1967 when suddenly the Arabs decided that the Arab people so outnumbering the Jews could never be looked upon as victims, so they had to form a sub-group that was a “minority” and now have created a myth of a people that never had its own land or culture.

I will just speak about the past few years. On May 24, 2000, Israel completed the withdrawal of its forces from southern Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 425. The UN affirmed that Israel had left all Lebanese territory. That didn’t stop Hezbollah from shelling our positions and kidnapping our soldiers. And there were kidnappings that were foiled that hardly made the news.

Last August, Israel expelled 7000 Jews from their homes in Gaza– people who lived on lands that had NEVER been occupied by Arabs. In fact, when they came to settle there, the local Arabs greeted them with bread and salt and wondered how these people planned to live on the sand. But that expulsion didn’t stop the rocket attacks on our cities or the murder and kidnapping of our soldiers.

Then we elected a new prime minister who (I think, foolishly) vowed to withdraw (expell Jews) from Judea and Samaria to try and establish a border with a fledgling Palestinian state (made up of a majority who applaud the murder of Jews.)

But that didn’t sate our enemies.

And now, the world has the nerve to tell us to act with restraint! Don’t they realize that the Arabs want us dead and gone and want to erase Israel from the map! Listen to Hezbollah’s broadcasts. Last night they referred to Haifa as being occupied land. So is, in their mind, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Lod, Rechovot…. Wait. I don’t have time to list all of the cities in Israel because if you look at their map of Palestine, it includes ALL of Israel.

Folks! We are fighting for our lives. We are fighting today in the north and in the south because all of this country is within range of their rockets. We live about 3 kilometers from an Arab village. Former cordial relations have been disrupted by the radicalization of their populations. Ever since the west has begun singing its song of moral equivalence with the refrain of “both sides” and “cycle of violence” and has advised Israel to “exercise restraint”, the Arabs have felt emboldened. They see themselves as having been taken seriously and realize that there is sympathy for their cause. It helps them maintain the hope that they will eventually wipe us out.

We must win this time. We can’t afford to lose. We’re betting our lives on it.

Filed Under: Israel, Ramblings

The Real Israel

June 21, 2006 by

When I lived in Oklahoma in the 1980s and talked about visiting Israel, the people I knew would urge me to be careful when I was in Beirut. I would explain to them that Beirut was in Lebanon, a country that I had no plans to visit. They would respond with something like, “Well, you need to be careful anyway” as if they didn’t buy a word of what I was saying.

Recently I met with people who were visiting Israel for the first time. They were surprised at how modern and Western it is. They talked about the friendly people and the clean rest room facilities and water that can be drunk and modern hotels and skyscrapers and delicious foods of all ethnic varieties. They had expected the ancient ruins and the historical monuments, and of course, the breathtaking vistas, but they were stunned with the modernity and the cosmopolitan feeling that pervades.

So it didn’t surprise me when another family we met recently reported hearing from someone in their Midwest American city the following about Israel, “We’re talking sand. We’re talking camels. We’re talking burkas.”

All I can say to that is come and visit our little piece of paradise. See it for yourself! From the mountains of the Hermon, covered with snow in the winter to the sparkling gulf at Eilat to the wooded trails of the Galilee to calm waters of the Kinneret to the bustle of Tel Aviv to the breathtakingly beautiful city of Jerusalem—Israel will wow you! And come and see our hi-tech industries, setting world standards. Enjoy sitting in a sidewalk café. And most of all, enjoy our most precious products—the bright-eyed, smiling children. Israel will lift your heart and your soul.

Filed Under: Israel, Ramblings Tagged With: , , , , ,
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