Tag: Cast Lead

The Tel Aviv party stops here

Naomi Klein | The Nation

9 September 2009

When I heard the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was holding a celebratory “spotlight” on Tel Aviv, I felt ashamed of Toronto, the city where I live. I thought immediately of Mona Al Shawa, a Palestinian women’s rights activist I met on a recent trip to Gaza. “We had more hope during the attacks,” she told me. “At least then we believed things would change.”

Al Shawa explained that while Israeli bombs rained down last December and January, Gazans were glued to their TVs. What they saw, in addition to the carnage, was a world rising up in outrage: global protests, as many as 100,000 on the streets of London, a group of Jewish women in Toronto occupying the Israeli Consulate. “People called it war crimes,” Al Shawa recalled. “We felt we were not alone in the world.” If Gazans could just survive, it seemed that their suffering could be the catalyst for change.

But today, Al Shawa said, that hope is a bitter memory. The international outrage has evaporated. Gaza has vanished from the news. And it seems that all those deaths–as many as 1,400–were not enough to bring justice. Indeed, Israel is refusing to cooperate even with a UN fact-finding mission headed by respected South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Last spring, while Goldstone’s mission was in Gaza gathering devastating testimony, the Toronto International Film Festival was making the final selections for its Tel Aviv spotlight, timed for the Israeli city’s hundredth birthday. There are many who would have us believe that there is no connection between Israel’s desire to avoid scrutiny for its actions in the occupied territories and the glittering Toronto premieres. I am sure that Cameron Bailey, TIFF’s co-director, believes that himself. He is wrong.

For more than a year, Israeli diplomats have been talking openly about their new strategy to counter growing global anger at Israel’s defiance of international law. It’s no longer enough, they argue, just to invoke Sderot every time someone raises Gaza. The task is also to change the subject to more pleasant topics: film, arts, gay rights–things that underline commonalities between Israel and places like Paris, New York and Toronto. After the Gaza attack, as the protests rose, this strategy went into high gear. “We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits,” Arye Mekel, deputy director-general for cultural affairs for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told the New York Times. “This way, you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.” And hip, cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, which has been celebrating its centennial with Israeli-sponsored “beach parties” in New York, Vienna and Copenhagen all summer long, is the best ambassador of all.

Toronto got an early taste of this new cultural mission. A year ago, Amir Gissin, Israeli consul-general in Toronto, explained that the “Brand Israel” campaign would include, according to a report in the Canadian Jewish News, “a major Israeli presence at next year’s Toronto International Film Festival, with numerous Israeli, Hollywood and Canadian entertainment luminaries on hand.” Gissin pledged, “I’m confident everything we plan to do will happen.” Indeed it has.

Let’s be clear: no one is claiming the Israeli government is secretly running TIFF’s Tel Aviv spotlight, whispering in Bailey’s ear about which films to program. The point is that the festival’s decision to give Israel pride of place, holding up Tel Aviv as a “young, dynamic city that, like Toronto, celebrates its diversity,” matches Israel’s stated propaganda goals to a T. Gal Uchovsky, one of the directors in the spotlight, is quoted in the festival catalog saying that Tel Aviv is “a haven [Israelis] can run away to when they want to forget about wars and the burdens of daily life.”

Partly in response, Udi Aloni, the wonderful Israeli filmmaker whose film Local Angel premiered at TIFF, sent a video message to the festival, challenging its programmers to resist political escapism and instead “go to the places where it’s hard to go.” It’s ironic that TIFF’s Tel Aviv programming is being called a spotlight, because celebrating that city in isolation–without looking at Gaza, without looking at what is on the other side of the towering concrete walls, barbed wire and checkpoints–actually obscures far more than it illuminates. There are some wonderful Israeli films included in the program. They deserve to be shown as a regular part of the festival, liberated from this highly politicized frame.

It was in this context that a small group of filmmakers, writers and activists, of which I was a part, drafted The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration Under Occupation (torontodeclaration.blogspot.com). It has been signed by the likes of Danny Glover, Viggo Mortensen, Howard Zinn, Alice Walker, Jane Fonda, Eve Ensler, Ken Loach and more than a thousand others. Among them is revered Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, as well as many Israeli filmmakers.

The counterattacks–spearheaded by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the extremist Jewish Defense League–have been at once predictable and inventive. The most frequently repeated claim is that the letter’s signatories are censors, calling for a boycott of the festival. In fact, many of the signatories have much-anticipated films at this year’s festival, and we are not boycotting it: we are objecting to the Tel Aviv spotlight portion of it. More inventive has been the assertion that by declining to celebrate Tel Aviv as just another cool metropolis, we are questioning the city’s “right to exist.” (The Republican actor Jon Voight even accused Jane Fonda of “aiding and abetting those who seek the destruction of Israel.”) The letter does no such thing. It is, instead, a simple message of solidarity, one that says: We don’t feel like partying with Israel this year. It is also a small way of saying to Mona Al Shawa and millions of other Palestinians living under occupation and siege that we have not forgotten them.

Hugo Chávez accuses Israel of genocide

Rory McCarthy | The Guardian

9 September 2009

Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, has accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinians, saying the offensive in Gaza early this year was unprovoked.

“The question is not whether the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians. They’re doing it openly,” he was quoted as saying in an interview with the French newspaper, Le Figaro.

“What was it, if not genocide? … The Israelis were looking for an excuse to exterminate the Palestinians.” His comments came after a tour of Middle Eastern and Arab countries.

Israel has maintained that the three-week Gaza assault was a response to rockets fired from Gaza by militant groups. However, several human rights groups have said that both Israel and Palestinian militant groups, notably Hamas, breached international law and should be investigated for possible war crimes.

A key UN report on the conflict, led by the respected South African judge Richard Goldstone, is due to be published within weeks.

New casualty figures for the Gaza offensive, compiled after months of research by an Israeli human rights group, show 1,387 Palestinians died, of whom more than half were not taking part in hostilities. The research from B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, challenges figures produced by the Israeli military, which argued that far fewer Palestinian civilians died.

B’Tselem said that its field researchers in Gaza interviewed witnesses and relatives of the dead, cross-checked information with Palestinian and international rights groups and with Israeli military statements. “B’Tselem did everything within its capability to verify the data,” the group said. It had asked to see an Israeli military list of fatalities but was refused. Israeli authorities also refused to allow Israeli and West Bank staff from B’Tselem to enter Gaza for the work.

The research found that 773 of those Palestinians killed were not taking part in hostilities; among them were 320 children under the age of 18. Field workers from the group visited the homes of the dead children, checking photographs, death certificates and other documents to establish the toll.

Another 330 of the dead were involved in the fighting and 248 were police officers killed at their police stations, most in a wave of air strikes on the first day of the conflict.

On the Israeli side, three civilians were killed by Palestinian militant rocket fire and 10 soldiers died, four of whom were killed accidentally by their own troops.

The Israeli military has released its own casualty figures for Palestinian deaths, saying 295 civilians were killed out of a total of 1,166 deaths, but has refused to publish its list of fatalities. The military said it believed that the B’Tselem report was “not based on facts or on accurate statistics”.

Although the military defended its conduct in the war, it has emerged that officers have started taking witness testimony from some Palestinians whose relatives were killed and injured. On Monday, Israeli military officers questioned Khaled Abed Rabbo, who saw two of his daughters shot dead by Israeli troops during the war. A third daughter was severely injured. The troops then demolished the family’s house, in Izbet Abed Rabbo, one of the worst damaged villages in Gaza.

B’Tselem publishes complete fatality figures from Operation Cast Lead

B’Tselem

9 September 2009

Today (Wed. Sept 9th) Israeli human rights group B’Tselem published its findings on the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. According to B’Tselem’s research, Israeli security forces killed 1,387 Palestinians during the course of the three-week operation. Of these, 773 did not take part in the hostilities, including 320 minors and 109 women over the age of 18. Of those killed, 330 took part in the hostilities, and 248 were Palestinian police officers, most of whom were killed in aerial bombings of police stations on the first day of the operation. For 36 people, B’Tselem could not determine whether they participated in the hostilities or not.

Palestinians killed 9 Israelis during the operation: 3 civilians and one member of the security forces by rockets fired into southern Israel, and 5 soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Another 4 soldiers were killed by friendly fire.

B’Tselem’s figures, the result of months of meticulous investigation and cross-checks with numerous sources, sharply contradict those published by the Israeli military. Israel stated that 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the operation and that 60% of them were members of Hamas and other armed groups. According to the military, a total of 295 Palestinians who were “not involved” in the fighting were killed. As the military refused to provide B’Tselem its list of fatalities, a comparison of names was not possible. However, the blatant discrepancy between the numbers is intolerable. For example, the military claims that altogether 89 minors under the age of 16 died in the operation. However, B’Tselem visited homes and gathered death certificates, photos, and testimonies relating to all 252 children under 16, and has the details of 111 women over 16 killed.

Behind the dry statistics lie shocking individual stories. Whole families were killed; parents saw their children shot before their very eyes; relatives watched their loved ones bleed to death; and entire neighborhoods were obliterated.

The extremely heavy civilian casualties and the massive damage to civilian property require serious introspection on the part of Israeli society. B’Tselem recognizes the complexity of combat in a densely populated area against armed groups that do not hesitate to use illegal means and find refuge within the civilian population. However, illegal and immoral actions by these organizations cannot legitimize such extensive harm to civilians by a state committed to the rule of law.

The extent of civilian fatalities does not, in itself, prove that Israeli violated the laws of war. However, the figures must be considered within the context of the numerous testimonies given by soldiers and Palestinians during and after the operation, which raise grave concerns that Israel breached fundamental principles of international humanitarian law and caused excessive harm to civilians. The magnitude of this harm requires Israel to conduct an independent and credible investigation, and not make do with military debriefings. Shortly after the operation, B’Tselem published guidelines for such an investigation and sent the Judge Advocate General’s Office some twenty illustrative cases, in which a total of about 90 Palestinian civilians were killed, demanding that they be investigated.

B’Tselem’s list of fatalities in Operation Cast Lead has been sent to the IDF Spokesperson’s Office for comment.

Organizations that participated in the statement: The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Bimkom, B’Tselem, Gisha, Physicians for Human Rights, Adalah , Yesh Din, HaMoked,Center for the Defence of the Individual, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights

Morality’s chief of staff

Gideon Levy | Ha’aretz

16 August 2009

Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi is a moral and ethical paragon who stands atop an organization that is no less moral or ethical. Last week, he broke his silence and proved his acute sensitivity to matters of conscience: “We have not one gram of tolerance,” the chief of staff said in a loud and clear voice, referring to those who had hazed soldiers. “We ought to view this incident as a reminder of the high ethical threshold expected of us,” he said in a clear and crisp voice, referring to the affair involving Brig. Gen. Imad Fares.

However, on the same day the chief of staff – who brags of his “high ethical threshold” – made his statements, a report commissioned by U.S.-based Human Rights Watch was made public. It stated that during Operation Cast Lead, the Israel Defense Forces killed 11 civilians, including five women and four children, who were carrying white flags, an act that has been characterized as a war crime. This should have been far more shocking, but we did not hear one word about it from the chief of staff. For this, he had kilograms of tolerance.

The IDF under Ashkenazi, who demanded that the army “scour with a steel comb every platoon and squad” in response to the hazing incident, did not investigate the killing of white-flag bearers. All of a sudden the IDF – whose spokesman, Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu, launched a disgraceful delegitimization campaign against the rights group Breaking the Silence for daring to take shocking testimonials from soldiers – is backing an investigation of every tent. “We ought to encourage revelations,” the fearlessly investigating chief of staff said of those hectoring soldiers, as the IDF stifles any possibility of revealing suspicions of war crimes.

If only our camp were clean, clean of those who abuse soldiers, purged of the minor liars. Allowing a child to drive an IDF-issued all-terrain vehicle? Forbidden. Killing children carrying white flags? Allowed. Lying about allowing your wife to drive an army-issued car? Forbidden. Killing women? Allowed. Administrative minutiae – a wife driving her husband’s car, a son driving an ATV and the hazing of fresh recruits – are grave matters. Mistakenly killing civilians is permitted. This is the message.

If abusing soldiers is forbidden and abusing Palestinians is permitted, we are talking about two sets of morals. The result is a double standard and dehumanization. When Ashkenazi says, “As officers we are measured in our ability to serve as a worthy personal example,” he is referring to trifling matters, like the Fares farce (and now we can add to this the grotesque case of the stolen credit card). He is not referring to ethical issues or problems of conscience. The extreme care given to such trivial matters is a wonderful fig leaf for the IDF because it allows it to prove “morality” and whitewash all allegations of war crimes.

Fares, like Brig. Gen. Moshe (Chico) Tamir before him, committed minor sins. Tamir, he of the ATV, was involved in far more grievous actions, including the errant killing of civilians in Jenin and Gaza, acts for which nobody thought to demote him. When the IDF responds with such force against two accomplished officers – boy, are they ever accomplished; all our combat officers are automatically labeled with this tag – it tries to blur their real crimes and those of their colleagues.

The IDF Spokesman’s Office occasionally issues official statements that do not always jibe with the truth, though for this we will forgive. Maj. Avital Leibovich, an IDF spokeswoman, told Al Jazeera in English on Thursday that the IDF does not fire on children. Then how did hundreds of children die during Operation Cast Lead? Was it an act of providence? Nobody objected to her deceitful propaganda. But when Fares lies on the fateful question of who drove his car, his fate is sealed. We have yet to see an officer whose service was terminated due to the errant killing of Palestinians in Gaza, but when it comes to lying to a car-leasing company, that’s another matter. These are the standards by which morals are judged in the most moral army in the world. No other organization in Israel speaks so often about “morals” while committing so many flagrantly amoral acts.

The previous chief of staff, Dan Halutz, was tainted by his “light shudder on the wing” comment when asked what he felt after he dropped a bomb. And he was only referring to one bomb. He claimed that he was misunderstood. Ashkenazi is made of Teflon; nothing sticks to him, not even after the unbridled assault on Gaza and the mass killing of civilians with countless bombs. Now he can also be thought of as a sensitive chief of staff whose like we have not seen when it comes to morality. Oh, how shocked he was to hear of the wet towels that were hurled at soldiers’ backs.

Rights group: Israel killed unarmed Palestinians

Jen Thomas | Associated Press

13 August 2009

A new report by Human Rights Watch charged Thursday that Israeli soldiers killed eleven unarmed Palestinian civilians who were carrying white flags in shooting incidents during Israel’s offensive in Gaza earlier this year.

The report says the civilians included five women and four children. The group urged Israel to conduct investigations into the deaths, which it said occurred when the civilians were “in plain view and posed no apparent security threat.”

The group says at least three witnesses confirmed the details in each of the seven separate shootings.

The report is the latest in a slew of charges from human rights groups alleging that Israel violated the rules of war in its Gaza offensive. The reports on the Gaza war have focused on Israeli violations, but Human Rights Watch has also said Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups violated the rules of war by firing thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians.

Israel says groups like Human Rights Watch are unfairly singling it out and has criticized the methodology of reports based largely on Palestinian testimony. Israel says it did not deliberately target civilians and that noncombatants were killed because Hamas militants took cover, fired rockets and stored ammunition in crowded residential areas.

In a response to the report, the Israeli military said its soldiers were obligated to avoid harming anyone waving a white flag but that in some cases Hamas militants had used civilians with white flags for cover.

“Any person who displays a white flag in this way acts illegally, does not enjoy protection from retaliatory action, and endangers nearby civilian populations,” the military said.

Last month, the Israeli government released its own report defending its use of force in Gaza. The report says Israel is investigating five alleged cases in which soldiers killed civilians carrying white flags, incidents that it said resulted in 10 deaths.

Two of the five incidents were among those mentioned by Human Rights Watch.

Both Israel and the Palestinians acknowledge that more than 1,100 Gazans were killed in the Israeli offensive. Palestinians say most were civilians. Israel says most were armed militants, but has not released evidence to back up that claim.

Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians were killed during the Gaza war.

Shortly after the new report was released, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev questioned the organization’s objectivity.

Regev did not directly comment on the Gaza allegations, instead referring to a recent flap over Human Rights Watch’s fundraising activities in Saudi Arabia. The group came under fire for reportedly highlighting its criticism of Israel at a meeting attended by several Saudi officials.

This, Regev said, “raises important questions about the organization’s impartiality, professionalism and credibility.”