Bastardisation of the East: "I'm going to swing my fists and walk towards you. Consider yourselves warned"

Friday, August 07, 2009

"I'm going to swing my fists and walk towards you. Consider yourselves warned"

From IPS:

"The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is taking new measures to warn Palestinian civilians about impending aerial attacks. [...]"

"Human rights groups have expressed concern that pamphlets dropped by the IDF before the attacks did not offer sufficient directions on where civilians should evacuate to or - in some cases - offered incorrect information telling civilians to "go to city centres" when the IDF subsequently attacked those very areas."

"Although over 200,000 phone calls were made to civilians in Gaza during ‘Operation Cast Lead’ the IDF has acknowledged that improvements in early warning technology would help prevent the deaths of civilians in future conflicts."

The saintly glow the IDF and its unconditional supporters bathe themselves in while informing critics that pamphlets were dropped and phone calls were made has never shone too brightly, given that in these punitive raids Palestinians always die in droves, that escape from Gaza by land, sea and air is impossible, that civilians might want to go home after the latest round of bombing has ended and that in the December massacre the first strikes were launched when Gaza City was at its most crowded. The sneaks working for the fabled Israeli intelligence services certainly would have known that at that time on Saturday children were coming home from school and the markets would be crowded, and that among the first victims were graduate traffic cops. When the IDF wants to assassinate a Hamas leader in a block of flats with a one tonne bomb the neighbours don't get any hints that their epitaph will be one of Mark Regev's excruciating toe curlers. Innovating new ways to assist the victims to "think fast!" or "duck!" as white phosphorus is raining down is beside the point here, and about as laudable as an assurance from ETA that the city centre might be unsafe between 12:10 and 12:11, especially around the car double parked by those government offices.

There is a better alternative. Cut out the aerial attacks altogether. The rockets from Hamas and Islamic Jihad are a legitimate concern that could be countered with a UN border force, much like the UNIFIL force preventing Hezbollah and the IDF coming to blows in the north. Yasser Arafat, the man Binyamin Netanyahu and his fellow travellers designated as the new Hitler in the window between Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's tenure, the man they claimed wanted to destroy Israel by "launching" an intifada, in fact spent an entire decade unsuccessfully trying to convince the likes of Yitzhak Shamir, Ehud Barak and James Baker that a UN force, even unarmed observers, should be dispatched to protect Palestinian civilians. It is a sad fact that a force like UNIFIL would only be accepted if the Israeli military and government genuinely believed Hamas represented the threat they so often claim it does.

¶ posted by the leech at 8/07/2009

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