The following thought­ful article on the Gaza conflict was written by Peter Baldwin, the former left-wing MP and Hawke and Keating Gov­ern­ment Minister. It sets out Baldwin’s reasons for sup­port­ing Israel, a rarity on the Left these days. The article takes the form of a letter addressed to the vir­u­lently anti-Israel UNSW academic Peter Slezak.

Dear Peter,
You will recall that at dinner after your engaging and inform­at­ive talk to the Black­heath Philo­sophy Forum on 26 July the con­ver­sa­tion turned to the Gaza conflict. It quickly became apparent that we disagreed fun­da­ment­ally, but not­with­stand­ing that the dis­cus­sion remained polite and con­struct­ive. You, as I dis­covered, are quite an activist on this issue – a speaker at ‘pro-Palestini­an’ rallies, blogger and a truly prodi­gious tweeter.
Reflect­ing on it afterward, I was frankly astounded by what you had to say about Hamas, Israel’s main adversary in the recent conflict. I said that Hamas taking control in Gaza was a disaster that made the current tragedy inev­it­able. You vig­or­ously disputed this, saying that the Gazans were being punished for voting for the ‘wrong’ people. I then brought up the notorious Hamas Charter that advocates anni­hil­at­ing Israel and, citing religious authority, looks forward to exterm­in­at­ing every last Jew. You dismissed the Charter as of little relevance and referred me to various resources that argue the Charter is old hat, that a ‘New Hamas’ has evolved.
I don’t think this view can withstand scrutiny. Despite overtures, ‘truce proposals’ and con­cili­at­ory-sounding briefings for Western journ­al­ists, Hamas’ com­mit­ment to the destruc­tion of Israel and ulti­mately to genocide of the Jews is undi­min­ished. They may well be prepared to live with Israel within the 1967 bound­ar­ies for a period, or as they say “during this phase”, but this is merely a precursor, an oppor­tun­ity to prepare to achieve their ultimate reli­giously sanc­tioned goals, set out with chilling clarity in the Charter, which Hamas would be in a vastly stronger position to pursue once ensconced in all the Palestini­an ter­rit­or­ies.
Something very strange has happened to the Western Left in recent times, exem­pli­fied by its attitude to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I say that as someone who was affil­i­ated with the Left of the Aus­trali­an Labor Party through­out by 22-year par­lia­ment­ary career. On the one hand, this is the great age of political cor­rect­ness, where the slightest implic­a­tion of racism, sexism or homo­pho­bia is instantly condemned and the per­pet­rat­ors required to do penance. Yet here we have clear advocacy of genocide, right there in plain sight in Hamas’ found­a­tion­al document adopted in 1988. Whole forests have been levelled to produce anti-Israel res­ol­u­tions. How many of these have called on Hamas to repudiate this foul, evil document? Some academic enthu­si­asts even argue that Hamas should be con­sidered part of the ‘pro­gress­ive Left’.
Israel, on the other hand, is the country that can do no right, blamed for a large share of the ills that beset the region if not the world. Even its friend­li­ness to the gay community (in a recent poll Tel Aviv was rated the world’s top gay tourist des­tin­a­tion) is derided at academic con­fer­ences as pink­wash­ing designed to mask its repres­sion of the Palestini­ans. Meanwhile in Teheran gays are publicly lynched from cranes. No res­ol­u­tions or con­fer­ences about that, needless to say. The Left has a singular obsession with the real or imagined misdeeds of Israel, giving little or no attention to far greater human­it­ari­an calam­it­ies such as the conflict in Syria and Iraq.
The thing I find par­tic­u­larly dis­turb­ing is not legit­im­ate criticism of Israel but the tacit or explicit support given to a movement that embodies everything the Left should stand against, one face of a hideous barbarism afflict­ing multiple locations through­out the Islamic world. It is impossible to reas­on­ably pass judgement on the Israelis without taking account of the nature of their adversar­ies. This the ‘pro-Palestini­an’ Left seems incapable of doing, and in effect ends up lending support to a futile and destruct­ive rejec­tion­ism that will ensure the con­tinu­ing immis­er­a­tion of the Palestini­ans.
THE HAMAS CHARTER – MEIN KAMPF REDUX
At our dinner dis­cus­sion the main issue we disagreed about was the nature of Hamas, a des­ig­nated terrorist organ­isa­tion that ori­gin­ally spe­cial­ized in suicide bombings and has since moved on to rockets and tunnels. Hamas was suc­cess­ful in the Palestini­an elections of January 2006, and took complete control of Gaza in June 2007 after an armed conflict with Fatah. This outcome was a disaster for the Palestini­ans, the Gazans espe­cially, the Israelis, and for the prospects for peace. You disputed this, not even conceding that, in com­par­is­on, Fatah was the ‘lesser evil’.
Hamas’ apo­lo­gists try to dif­fer­en­ti­ate Hamas from other Islamist groups in the news such as the so-called Islamic State and Boko Haram. Admit­tedly, Hamas generally avoids the extra­vag­ant cruelty of these groups, though the mask slips peri­od­ic­ally as with the recent brutal killing of 16 men and 2 women accused of col­lab­or­at­ing with Israel, carried out before an audience that included young children, the ruthless gunning down of Gazan peace pro­test­ers opposed to rocket launches, and the hurling of Fatah officials off the top of tall buildings during the 2007 Battle of Gaza. Hamas pursues a different media strategy to these other groups since dis­cred­it­ing and isolating Israel in the eyes of Western public opinion is a central part of its strategy, but it shares the same religious ideology and ultimate object­ives.
This brings me to Hamas’ genocidal founding Charter, adopted in 1988 and never rescinded despite repeated calls to do so. On this, even Israel’s defenders often under­state matters, pointing out the document calls for the oblit­er­a­tion of Israeli. But it is far worse than that. Here are some excerpts (the bold headings are mine):
Oblit­er­a­tion of Israel (Preamble): Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will oblit­er­ate it, just as it oblit­er­ated others before it.
Genocide of the Jews (Article 7): The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”
No peaceful solution (Article 13):Ini­ti­at­ives, and so-called peaceful solutions and inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences, are in con­tra­dic­tion to the prin­ciples of the Islamic Res­ist­ance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nation­al­ism of the Islamic Res­ist­ance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. “Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know.”
Endorse­ment of Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Article 32): The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.
The ‘pro-Palestini­an’ Left maintains that Hamas should be recog­nized by Israel and the West as a legit­im­ate partner in nego­ti­at­ing a permanent set­tle­ment of the Arab-Israeli dispute. How can that be squared with the Charter? Here the narrative asserts that Hamas has moved on since adopting the Charter, that a kinder, gentler ‘New Hamas’ has emerged more concerned with winning elections and meeting the chal­lenges of civil gov­ernance. This view is expressed in the book by the American political economist Sara Roy, which you strongly recom­men­ded, titled Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector. This line has gained some traction. According to US Rep­res­ent­at­ive Nancy Pelosi (following assur­ances from Qatari officials) Hamas is “basically a human­it­ari­an organ­isa­tion”.
For Western con­sump­tion Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has said the Charter is “a piece of history and no longer relevant, but cannot be changed for internal reasons”. So what are we to make of an organ­isa­tion that is incapable of repu­di­at­ing a com­mit­ment to genocide for unspe­cified internal reasons? What does that say about this organ­isa­tion, and those who comprise its lead­er­ship echelon? And even if, contrary to the facts, Hamas were to rescind the Charter, what does it say about the mentality of those concerned that they were prepared to adopt such a document in the first place? Should Israel place its existence on the line by allowing it to control a future state that includes both Gaza and the West Bank? You place great store on various proposals and utter­ances from Hamas spokesmen that imply accept­ance of Israel within the 1967 bound­ar­ies. I contend such sig­nalling is com­pletely insincere, designed purely for Western con­sump­tion. This matter is taken up in detail in the next section.
In case you think Hamas have eased off on the calls for Jewish exterm­in­a­tion, take a look at the trans­la­tion of this sermon broadcast recently on the official Hamas channel Al-Aqsa TV.
And note this sickening children’s TV show broadcast on the same network in May this year in which the children are called on to kill the Jews.
You fault the Israelis for being unwilling to accept the Palestini­an’s ‘choice’ of Hamas. But look at it from their point of view. Is it sur­pris­ing the Israelis are reluctant to accept as a legit­im­ate peace partner an organ­isa­tion that:

• Refuses to rescind its founding Charter that calls for the complete oblit­er­a­tion of Israel.
• Calum­ni­ates Jews as a group in terms that recall the worst of 1930s Nazi pro­pa­ganda, including citing the 19^th century Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
• Invoking scrip­tur­al authority, looks forward to com­plet­ing Adolph Hitler’s project by exterm­in­at­ing every last Jew on the face of the earth.
• Continues to affirm Charter goals, including Jewish exterm­in­a­tion, right up to the present day not­with­stand­ing some faux con­cili­at­ory gestures for Western audiences.
• Takes pains to inculcate the next gen­er­a­tion with this same hateful agenda.

As against all this, you point to instances of Israeli extrem­ists. I don’t deny the existence of extreme religious zealots in Israel who have made some appalling state­ments. You sent me an article about the West Bank Rabbi Dov Lior, who sounds like a thor­oughly execrable character. But did you notice the paragraph in the article that reads:
Lior was arrested in 2011 after months of refusing to appear for ques­tion­ing for his endorse­ment of the book “Torat Hamelech,” or “The King’s Torah” by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, which justifies killing non-Jews.
Can you point to an instance anywhere in the Arab world where someone was arrested for inciting people to kill Jews? Not in Gaza I bet. Ponder the con­trast­ing reactions to the murder of three Israeli teenagers followed by the brutal killing of a Palestini­an teenager. In Israel the murder of the Palestini­an was unequi­voc­ally condemned by almost everyone. Netanyahu called it an “abom­in­able murder” and vowed to hold the per­pet­rat­ors account­able; the con­dem­na­tion included the Israeli right-wing press. Six suspects were quickly arrested and will face the full force of the law. Hamas hailed the killers of the Israelis as heroes and offered no con­dem­na­tion, and made no attempt to arrest suspects. After initial denials, Hamas even­tu­ally claimed ‘credit’ for the kid­nap­ping and murder.
State­ments by rel­at­ively minor figures hardly provide grounds to accuse the Israelis of the same “genocidal racism” as Hamas, as you did in an email to me. They are clearly unrep­res­ent­at­ive of the general tenor of public discourse in Israel, or of gov­ern­ment policy. You also say Israeli attitudes are far more important as they have “vastly greater power and don’t hesitate to use it”. They clearly have an over­whelm­ing pre­pon­der­ance of military power, but to imply they have made unres­trained use of it is absurd. If they had the same mentality as say, the Assad regime in Syria or the Allied powers in World War II, let alone a truly genocidal mentality, the Israeli air force could reduce the whole of Gaza to smoking rubble in a couple of days. There would be no warnings, no text messages, phone calls, leaflets, and the death toll would be a large multiple of what happened. There are plenty of questions about the tactics the IDF did actually use, and I make some obser­va­tions about this below, but to suggest they engaged in delib­er­ate wholesale slaughter is clearly false.
And imagine if the tables were turned and Hamas had the edge. A pointless hypo­thet­ic­al, you might say, except that Israel is being called on to accept the pos­sib­il­ity of a Hamas-con­trolled state that includes the West Bank, which they openly gloat will allow them to “wipe out” Israel.
TRUCES AND ‘HUDNAS’ – FEEDING THE CHOOKS
A key part of the ‘New Hamas’ narrative is that Hamas has, since adopting the Charter, moved to de facto recog­ni­tion of Israel. Sup­port­ers of this view point to several occasions where Hamas has proposed long-term truces, or to use the Islamic term that Hamas prefers ‘hudnas’. These are clearly not sincere proposals as Hamas spokesmen regularly refute any sug­ges­tion they will accept Israel on any bound­ar­ies, right up to the present day. This talk about hudnas is important however to give Hamas’ Western apo­lo­gists and enablers something to fly with, and the media and some politi­cians are all too willing to take the bait. It calls to mind the expres­sion ‘feeding the chooks’ that former Queens­land Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen used when briefing the media.
A prime piece of chook feed is an interview given by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to the New York Times on 5 May 2009. The interview is cited in the book by Sara Roy that I mentioned above, which you strongly recom­men­ded Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector. Roy is one of the best-known academic apo­lo­gists for Hamas:
The world must deal with what Hamas is prac­ti­cing today. Hamas has accepted the national recon­cili­ation document. It has accepted a Palestini­an state on the 1967 borders including East Jerusalem, dis­mant­ling set­tle­ments, and the right of return based on a long term truce. Hamas has rep­res­en­ted a clear political program through a unity gov­ern­ment. This is Hamas’s program regard­less of the historic documents.
Meshaal said something similar when meeting with a group of European par­lia­ment­ari­ans around the same time. According to a report in Haaretz:
He said the Hamas gov­ern­ment had agreed to accept a Palestini­an state that followed the 1967 borders and to offer Israel a long-term hudna, or truce, if Israel recog­nized the Palestini­ans’ national rights.
Even if taken at face value and assuming Hamas would actually honor any long-term truce, the proposal amounts to a suicide pact for Israel. Note the insist­ence on the “right of return”, by which Hamas – and the Palestini­an Authority for that matter – mean the ability of Palestini­an refugees and their des­cend­ants to return within the pre-1967 bound­ar­ies of Israel. The Jewish Israelis are expected to agree to an arrange­ment in which they are poten­tially reduced to a minority, possibly ruled by an organ­isa­tion that cannot bring itself to repudiate a com­mit­ment to anni­hil­ate them and all their kind. Clearly they will never agree to this.
The reference to a ‘long term truce’ – rather than a permanent peace – is one of a number of such ref­er­ences to which the Hamas apo­lo­gists attach great store. But what do Hamas have in mind when they talk of a truce? To most West­ern­ers, this would be inter­preted as an inter­me­di­ate step leading to a permanent set­tle­ment.
Actually ‘truce’ is a somewhat inac­cur­ate rendering into English of the Islamic concept of hudna, which in Islamic tradition is a temporary expedient that provides an oppor­tun­ity to regroup, rearm and prepare for the next round of battle. The original hudna was a ten-year arrange­ment that, according to the Islamic scrip­tures, Muhammad made with a rival tribe. The hudna held only for 18 months before being broken, when a stronger Muhammad was able to fulfil his ambition to conquer Mecca. According to Wikipedia:
The use of the term hudna to mean truce can lead to mis­un­der­stand­ing. His­tor­ic­ally within the civil­isa­tion of Christen­dom calling a truce has been under­stood as a movement towards permanent peace and an agreed res­ol­u­tion of the conflict. The Arabic term does not contain this meaning at all, being used to get the other side to stop fighting or hos­til­it­ies or other uses of power or force which look like they will lead to the defeat of the jihadi. There can be no assump­tion that anyone seeking hudna has any intention of surrender or permanent cessation of hos­til­it­ies; just a time to rest, regroup and revive.
In May 1994 Yasir Arafat was embar­rassed by the leaking of what he thought was an off-the-record talk at a mosque in Johan­nes­burg, South Africa, where his remarks in English were sur­repti­tiously recorded. On being cri­ti­cised about con­ces­sions made to Israel in the Oslo nego­ti­ations, he made a sly reference to the original hudna:
I see this agreement as being no more than the agreement signed between our Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh in Mecca… we now accept the peace agreement, but only in order to continue on the road to Jerusalem.
Hamas MP and spokesman Mushir Al Masri spells it out clearly in the video below, where he says:
A ‘truce’ in the dic­tion­ary of the res­ist­ance means preparing for the next battle… Our res­ist­ance will keep on devel­op­ing, producing and filling its arsenals and in the pro­duc­tion of sur­pris­ing elements for the next battles until the Zionist enemy leaves our land, with the help of Allah.
And what does the gentleman from Hamas think can be achieved by utilizing the breathing space provided by a hudna? Again, the following video is helpfully explicit, with the Hamas spokesman looking forward to new and improved missiles, suicide drones, naval commandos – and much more:
As it happens, Meshaal’s con­cili­at­ory pose for the benefit of New York Times readers is blown apart in the pages of Sara Roy’s own book. In the Afterword to the Paperback Edition at page 246 she mentions his visit to Gaza in December 2012 (he is normally safely ensconced in Qatar). Roy notes:
Yet some of Meshaal’s state­ments to the tens (and, according to Hamas, hundreds) of thousands of people who came to hear him stood in striking contrast to his more pragmatic and con­cili­at­ory position on ending the occu­pa­tion and accept­ance, in effect, of a two-state arrange­ment based on 1967 borders.
That’s putting it rather mildly. Here is what he said (as quoted by Roy):
Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no con­ces­sion on an inch of the land. We will never recognize the legit­im­acy of the Israeli occu­pa­tion and therefore there is no legit­im­acy for Israel, no matter how long it will take … The state will come from res­ist­ance, not nego­ti­ation.
Here is the video of the full rant:
Roy actually manages to put a positive spin on all this, going on to claim Meshaal had prevailed against even more extreme opponents and to ask:
Does Meshaal’s re-election signal a desire for greater mod­er­a­tion and prag­mat­ism within Hamas as Eldar suggests?
So, according to Roy, Meshaal is the voice of mod­er­a­tion in Hamas. I doubt the Israelis will be reassured.
Hamas apo­lo­gists also claim that a historic oppor­tun­ity for peace was squandered by Israel’s and the US oppos­i­tion to the creation of a ‘unity gov­ern­ment’ of Hamas and the PLO arising from the recon­cili­ation agreement of 23 April of this year. In an opinion piece in the New York Times of July 17 this year Nathan Thrall argues the recon­cili­ation gov­ern­ment would have locked Hamas into recog­ni­tion of Israel and concludes:
The current escal­a­tion in Gaza is a direct result of the choice by Israel and the West to obstruct the imple­ment­a­tion of the April 2014 Palestini­an recon­cili­ation agreement. The road out of the crisis is a reversal of that policy.
However any sug­ges­tion of recog­ni­tion of Israel within any bound­ar­ies was imme­di­ately repu­di­ated by Hamas spokesmen. The ‘moderate’ Khaled Meshaal said “Our path is res­ist­ance and the rifle, and our choice is jihad” and called for a joint strategy that would lead to the “lib­er­a­tion of our lands and holy sites and the return of the Palestini­an refugees to their homes”. This was reit­er­ated on August 17 by Hamas spokesman Samir Abu Zuhri who made it clear the Hamas goal was the “lib­er­a­tion of Jerusalem”, not lifting the Gaza blockade:
Note the chant about 20 seconds into the video:
Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews…
The threat of Khaybar refers to the Muslim slaughter and expulsion of the Jews in a town of the name in north­west­ern Arabia in 628 CE.
But the most telling response came from the deputy chairman of the Hamas political bureau as reported by the Middle East news agency Al-Monitor:
Hamas will not recognize Israel,” Mousa Abu Marzouk, deputy chairman of Hamas’ political bureau, told Al-Monitor in an exclusive interview.
This is a red line that cannot be crossed,” said the 63-year-old Hamas leader who played a pivotal role in achieving the recon­cili­ation deal with Fatah on April 23.
Abu Marzouk’s remarks come as Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Palestini­an Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meet in Qatar. The Hamas leader added that the Quartet’s require­ment that Hamas recognize Israel “do not concern us one bit.”
“We would have spared ourselves seven years of misery under the siege and two wars in 2008 and 2012 had we wanted to recognize Israel,” he said.
Note espe­cially the final paragraph. Clearly, Hamas’ primary goal is to anni­hil­ate Israel even at the cost of inflict­ing untold misery on their own people.
You sent me a link to an article by John Lyons in the Aus­trali­an newspaper of 4 September that cites Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef saying to Lyons that Hamas would renounce violence and settle for a state on 1967 bound­ar­ies. The problem is that, as shown above and as acknow­ledged by the author of another article you strongly recom­men­ded, Jerome Slater, Hamas says different things on different days. It also says very different things in English to Western audiences and in Arabic to Palestini­an audiences. Even if we take them at face value, all its proposals are tied to the “right of return” of Palestini­an refugees – and their des­cend­ants – into Israel proper, not a future Palestini­an state. It would be trivially easy to find some excuse to breach any such arrange­ment, has happened with the original hudna. And the Charter remains intact, sanc­ti­fied by scrip­tur­al authority.
Jerome Slater puts the best possible slant on it:
Despite the occa­sion­al mixed signals and con­tra­dict­ory rhetoric, there simply is no doubting the ongoing evolution of Hamas thinking.
Mixed signals? Here is a much less benign but far more plausible take on Hamas’ evolving thinking. Hamas would very much like to have control of all the Palestini­an ter­rit­or­ies outside the 1967 borders, but not as a permanent set­tle­ment. Rather, it would facil­it­ate achieve­ment of their ultimate and con­stantly reit­er­ated goal, a Palestini­an state “from the river to the sea” that includes, in Khaled Meshaal’s words, “every inch” of Israel. With a much longer border with Israel, much greater proximity to Israel’s main pop­u­la­tion centres and the ability to import weapons and dual-use items without let or hindrance, they would be able to make life pretty much intol­er­able in Israel, indeed they are already talking about how control of the West Bank would allow them to “wipe out Israel”.
If you were an Israeli would you be prepared to bet your future, and that of your des­cend­ants, on that not being the real plan?
ABSOLVING HAMAS – ROCKETS, TUNNELS AND HUMAN SHIELDS
According to the ‘pro-Palestini­an’ Left, Hamas can do no wrong. Well, that’s an exag­ger­a­tion, but not that far from the mark. One of the items you sent me after our dis­cus­sion was a link to a video dated 3 August of a speech you gave to a ‘pro-Palestini­an’ rally in downtown Sydney in which you said the following:
We hear about rockets, tunnels, ter­ror­ists, targeted pinpoint surgical attacks, human shields and crossfire. I teach philo­sophy and language and I care about precise language – it’s bullshit.
I am unclear as to what, precisely, you are saying here. You have acknow­ledged elsewhere that Hamas firing rockets indis­crim­in­ately into civilian areas of Israel is a violation of inter­na­tion­al law, and it is indis­put­able that Hamas has expended great resources, years of effort, and the lives of hundreds of children to build a vast network of tunnels beneath densely populated areas of Gaza to protect its key personnel, command posts and other parts of its military infra­struc­ture, to smuggle weapons and goods in from Egypt, as well as to provide a means of inserting ter­ror­ists into Israel. The one thing the tunnels are not available for is to protect the civilian pop­u­la­tion of Gaza, Hamas’ pro­pa­ganda strategy being to ensure such cas­u­al­ties are maximized when the inev­it­able Israeli retali­ation for their attacks comes.
And human shields? Hamas would help their Western defenders by refrain­ing from boasting about the success of the human shield strategy on Arabic language media, as Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri does in the video below. Note the first part, where families are described going to the roof of a house “to prevent the Zionist warplanes targeting it” in response to Israeli warnings that an attack was imminent.
It is beyond dispute that Hamas has delib­er­ately located rocket launch sites, command posts and weapons stock­piles in hospitals, schools, hotels and densely populated res­id­en­tial area. The evidence for this is available from a multitude of credible sources, though you would never guess it from much of the Western media. The UN has acknow­ledged the storage of weapons stock­piles in its schools (which it then returned to Hamas). According to John Ging the UN Relief and Works Agency Gaza director:
Yes, the armed groups are firing their rockets into Israel from the vicinity of UN facil­it­ies and res­id­en­tial areas. Abso­lutely.
The UN High Com­mis­sion­er for Human Rights Navi Pillay accused Hamas militants of violating inter­na­tion­al human­it­ari­an law by:
locating rockets within schools and hospitals, or even launching these rockets from densely populated areas.
Journ­al­ist Richard Behar has set out an extensive com­pil­a­tion of the evidence in a recent article that appeared in Forbes magazine.
The evidence includes video footage of rocket launches. Here is a sample:
1. Finnish tele­vi­sion report of a rocket launch from the back carpark of the Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest. The journ­al­ist says “right in the back parking lot of Al Shifa Hospital a rocket was launched, two o’clock in the morning. Really, it happened right in the area, the sound of it was really loud”. The Wash­ing­ton Post reported that the hospital had become a “de facto headquar­ters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices”.
2. Footage from Indian tele­vi­sion station NDTV showing the assembly and launching of a Hamas rocket from outside a hotel located in a densely populated area. The Indian reporter described the pervasive fear among reporters of reprisals by Hamas against anyone reporting these launches. Generally they refrain from doing so until safely out of Gaza.
3. France 24 tele­vi­sion reporter startled by rocket launch from within a heavily populated area, right next to a UN facility.
So why haven’t we heard more about this? Part of the answer is Hamas intim­id­a­tion. The Foreign Press Asso­ci­ation com­plained about “blatant, incessant, forceful and unortho­dox” intim­id­a­tion of journ­al­ists in Gaza by Hamas, including the Indian TV journ­al­ists whose story appears above. The Forbes article by Richard Behar I referred to above maintains there is sys­tem­at­ic bias on the part of some Western media organ­isa­tions including the New York Times, the BBC and CNN. The only coverage about this in the Aus­trali­an press is an article in The Aus­trali­an by two research­ers at the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Committee.
The evidence that Hamas has launched attacks and placed military facil­it­ies in or in close proximity to civilian install­a­tions is over­whelm­ing. The larger point is that Gaza as a whole has been turned into one big human shield, sitting above a sub­ter­ranean world of tunnels that protect key Hamas personnel, weapon stock­piles and man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­it­ies, and command centres. This network is con­cen­trated in par­tic­u­lar suburbs, and these are the ones that have suffered the greatest damage. The tunnels are purely military install­a­tions, with no access to for the civilian pop­u­la­tion – there are no public bomb shelters in Gaza. By sys­tem­at­ic­ally denying or ignoring this reality and attrib­ut­ing all blame for civilian cas­u­al­ties to Israel, Hamas apo­lo­gists and sections of the Western media are integral to the success of this strategy, rewarding it and ensuring its con­tinu­ation.
So how should Israel respond to an adversary that thinks nothing of putting its own civilians at risk? The Israeli author and intel­lec­tu­al Amos Oz, a founder of the Peace Now movement, strong critic of the West Bank set­tle­ments, and one of the earliest advocates of a two-state solution after the 1967 war, draws an analogy: Suppose you found yourself being fired at by a neighbour across the street who does so with a child on his knee. What would you do? Oz thought that Israel had no choice than to mount a military operation, even though this would inev­it­ably lead to civilian cas­u­al­ties, though he thinks the level of force was excessive.
One can quibble with Oz’s analogy. One thought that occurred to me was to ask whether Israel could not just sit out Hamas’ rel­at­ively inef­fec­tu­al rocket attacks protected by the Iron Dome system and its extensive civil defence measures. There are several problems with this. For one thing it is clear that had Hamas’ sinister ‘attack tunnel’ strategy, which Israeli intel­li­gence services grossly under­es­tim­ated before entering Gaza, come to fruition as planned later this year there was the potential for terrorist attacks and hostage taking on an appalling scale. Fur­ther­more there is no doubt that Hamas strives relent­lessly to improve its cap­ab­il­it­ies, with attempts to smuggle in more potent missiles and other weapons, maybe with chemical or bio­lo­gic­al warheads in future.
So the notion that Israel could have just sat out the Hamas onslaught may provide an inter­est­ing topic for a uni­ver­sity seminar on moral philo­sophy, but is something that no real-world gov­ern­ment faced with this situation could or would do. Once the decision was taken to respond mil­it­ar­ily to attacks emanating from densely populated areas, civilian cas­u­al­ties were inev­it­able. Could Israel have done more to minimize them, more than the phone calls, text messages and ‘warning rockets’ and careful targeting that they used? There clearly were serious failures, leading to appalling results. But what we can say with certainty is that these were not intended. As the Israelis know all too well, every high profile tragedy is a pro­pa­ganda windfall for Hamas, and a cor­res­pond­ing nightmare for them.
A full explor­a­tion of the pro­por­tion­al­ity of Israel response would require a separate article, but it is clear that the claim Israel killed indis­crim­in­ately is false. Had it done so, the death toll would have been far higher and, as belatedly acknow­ledged by the BBC and New York Times, the age and gender profile of cas­u­al­ties would have been different (most media accepted figures on the combatant/civilian ratio provided by the Hamas-con­trolled Gaza health ministry, on which UN estimates were also based). A detailed analysis of the pattern of targeting shows that the strikes were aimed at specific areas close to the border where Hamas infra­struc­ture was most con­cen­trated.
THE GAZA WITHDRAWAL – A COUNTER-FACTUAL
At this point it is useful to engage in some counter-factual history, to ponder how things might have been, after the Israeli with­draw­al from Gaza in 2005. This with­draw­al provided the oppor­tun­ity for an alto­geth­er different future for the people of Gaza, an oppor­tun­ity tra­gic­ally squandered.
From August to September 2005 under Ariel Sharon’s gov­ern­ment Israel carried out a with­draw­al from Gaza, both military and civilian. The entire pop­u­la­tion of 21 Jewish set­tle­ments in Gaza, around 9000 people in all, was removed, forcibly in many cases.
The decision to do this was hugely con­tro­ver­sial in Israel. It was defeated at different stages within the Knesset (par­lia­ment), the cabinet, and the Likud Party, prompting several min­is­teri­al resig­na­tions and the with­draw­al of Sharon’s coalition partners. It required the formation of a new gov­ern­ment with Shimon Peres in January 2005 to secure passage. Sharon was accused of selling-out by sections of the Right while gaining some praise from the Left. Among the most vocal opponents was Benjamin Netanyahu, who resigned from the cabinet just before it ratified the first phase of the dis­en­gage­ment plan on August 7 2005. In his first speech after resigning Netanyahu warned that the Gaza with­draw­al would create a “huge base for terror”.
Inter­na­tion­ally the response was positive. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan praised Sharon’s “cour­ageous decision”; EU Foreign Minister Javier Solana welcomed the decision as rep­res­ent­ing “an oppor­tun­ity to restart imple­ment­a­tion of the Road Map”. Copious amounts of devel­op­ment aid were on offer. An Agreement on Movement and Access was made between Israel and the Palestini­an Authority shortly after that would have opened up border crossings, estab­lished a safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank and set in motion devel­op­ment of sea and air ports. The Israelis left behind a sub­stan­tial economic infra­struc­ture, including 3000 high tech­no­logy green­houses. There was con­sid­er­able optimism about where this could lead, with talk of Gaza becoming the “Singapore of the Medi­ter­ranean”.
A great oppor­tun­ity, but one that was lost almost imme­di­ately. The rockets starting flying literally within hours of the last Israeli troops with­draw­ing and have not stopped since, some 11,000 between then and the start of hos­til­it­ies in July 2014. The election of Hamas in the Palestini­an legis­lat­ive elections in January 2006 led to an embargo on aid by the members of the Quartet, and in the aftermath of the Gaza War that saw the expulsion of Fatah from Gaza the Israelis and Egyptians imposed restric­tions on non-human­it­ari­an supplies (these were relaxed in 2010). Hamas directed huge resources away from civilian con­struc­tion into building its sub­ter­ranean war making apparatus, and used this in suc­cess­ive rounds of conflict with Israel. The result was a dev­ast­ated Gazan economy, parts of Gaza reduced to smoking ruins and thousands of wrecked lives.
Imagine that things had turned out dif­fer­ently. Suppose that when the Israelis withdrew in 2005 the lead­er­ship in Gaza had decided to focus on the pursuits of peace, devel­op­ing Gaza’s economic and social infra­struc­ture, fostering mutually bene­fi­cial relations with Israel and the region, and building thriving indus­tries in areas where Gaza has natural advant­ages such as tourism and hor­ti­cul­ture. The people of Gaza could today be enjoying one of the highest living standards in the region. Instead of appearing prescient, Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre­dic­tion in August 2005 that Gaza would become a “huge base for terror” would have been falsified. This could have provided the basis for a broader two-state solution to the Israel- Palestini­an solution based on mutual trust. As things have turned out, Gaza may have fatally weakened the chances for such a solution.
There is a broader point here. Time and again, Palestini­an rep­res­ent­at­ives and their advocates in the West find reasons why oppor­tun­it­ies like this should not be taken up because it fails to provide full ‘justice’ to the Palestini­ans. In the case of Gaza they raise Israel’s continued control of sea and air approaches, or they complain about continued West Bank set­tle­ments. In my view, anyone genuinely concerned about the welfare of the Palestini­ans would urge them to set aside con­sid­er­a­tions of (unat­tain­able) ultimate justice and instead try to imagine what life would be like for the Palestini­ans today if they had embraced the oppor­tun­ity for peaceful devel­op­ment afforded by the Gaza with­draw­al. Or by the Clinton-sponsored proposal in 2000 that would have given the Palestini­ans 94 percent of the West Bank (plus 3 percent in a land swap), East Jerusalem and a $38 billion com­pens­a­tion package for the refugees; or the 2007 Olmert proposal. Or for that matter the original UN partition of Palestine in 1947. Not full justice, you might object, but an incom­par­ably better outcome for the people concerned.
CONCLUSION
A striking feature of this latest round of Gaza fighting is that the decision to launch Operation Pro­tect­ive Edge had the support of the over­whelm­ing majority of Jewish Israelis, across the political spectrum. According to a recent poll, 92 percent con­sidered the operation justified, and that even included 67 percent of self-described Leftists. The same poll showed much less agreement about the way the campaign was waged, but the dis­sent­ers over­whelm­ingly thought Israel should have pro­sec­uted the campaign more aggress­ively to achieve a decisive victory over Hamas.
These figures are sur­pris­ing given the high civilian death toll, Israel’s own cas­u­al­ties and the over­whelm­ingly negative coverage of Israel’s actions in the world media. While there is a far Right religious fringe, the Israeli elect­or­ate in the main shares many of the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of a typical Western democracy where this level of consensus for a military campaign is very rare. Unlike its neigh­bours, including the Palestini­an ter­rit­or­ies, Israel has a lively and con­ten­tious demo­crat­ic life where strong critics can and do have their say.
How do we account for this consensus? My reading of it is that most Israelis feel they are con­fron­ted by an appalling dilemma, with an enemy on their doorstep committed to the anni­hil­a­tion of their state and each one of them per­son­ally. An enemy that is perfectly prepared to launch indis­crim­in­ate attacks on Israel’s civilian pop­u­la­tion in a way delib­er­ately cal­cu­lated to maximize cas­u­al­ties amongst its own pop­u­la­tion when the inev­it­able response comes in order to discredit and isolate Israel in the eyes of the world.
An Israeli author who visited Australia recently, Yossi Halevi, described the potential impact of Hamas’ rocket attacks in an article for the The Aus­trali­an newspaper:
The images of Israeli dis­lo­ca­tion are hardly as heart­break­ing as the images from Gaza. And yet the psy­cho­lo­gic­al con­sequences are sig­ni­fic­ant. For years, Israelis in some southern com­munit­ies have arranged their lives so they are always within seconds of a shelter. But recently these south­ern­ers have been calling into radio talk shows with a common refrain: we can’t take it anymore. There is a real pos­sib­il­ity of a permanent mass defection from this part of the country. And if Israelis can’t live on the border with Gaza, the same may prove true for those who live on the border with Lebanon. Many Israelis will draw the con­clu­sion anti­cip­ated by Arafat: There is no future here.
This is clearly Hamas’ strategy. Make life intol­er­able for the pop­u­la­tion of Israel as part of its long-term strategy to eliminate the Jewish state alto­geth­er. And imagine how much more severe the problem would be if Hamas were to gain control of the West Bank as well as Gaza, with a far longer border and much greater proximity to the main Israeli pop­u­la­tion centres and the freedom to import weapons and dual-use items without restraint.
I will conclude on a slightly philo­soph­ic­al note. Like you (correct me if I’m wrong) I think the best ethical framework for judging actions and policies is Con­sequen­tial­ism, the viewpoint that calls on us to focus on practical results rather than sen­ti­ments, motives, displays of solid­ar­ity – or even rumin­at­ing too much about what ‘justice’ ulti­mately requires. I doubt the Israel-Palestine dispute will finally be resolved by some grand bargain that all the parties sign on to and implement in good faith. Rather than hang out for this, a more plausible approach is to pursue every oppor­tun­ity to ameli­or­ate life for those concerned and to implement partial solutions that can build trust and lay the basis for better things. The tragedy of Gaza is that just such an oppor­tun­ity was squandered.