At the ten-year anniversary of Israel’s 2008/09 Operation Cast Lead, it’s expected that we will see articles in the media critical of Israel’s military operation against Hamas in Gaza.
This was the first of a number of Israeli military operations in response to indiscriminate rocket and mortar fired from Gaza towards Israeli civilian targets.
So it is the case, unsurprisingly, in The Guardian, where UK-based Israeli academic and longtime Israel critic Avi Shlaim launches his own assault on Israel. According to him, Operation Cast Lead:
was not a war or even “asymmetric warfare” but a one-sided massacre. Israel had 13 dead; the Gazans had 1,417 dead, including 313 children, and more than 5,500 wounded. According to one estimate 83% of the casualties were civilians. Israel claimed to be acting in self-defence, protecting its civilians against Hamas rocket attacks. The evidence, however, points to a deliberate and punitive war of aggression. Israel had a diplomatic alternative, but it chose to ignore it and to resort to brute military force.
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Casualties as a Moral Barometer
Shlaim begins with a typical case of using casualty figures as a moral barometer. By quoting the mismatch in the deaths and injuries between the two sides stripped of context, Shlaim signals that Israel is the aggressor despite the fact that readers:
- Will not know that Hamas embedded itself in the civilian population leading to higher numbers of civilian deaths.
- Will also be unaware of Israel’s enormous efforts to prevent loss of innocent lives.
- And the reason for the lower Israeli casualty figures? Simply that Israel goes to great lengths to protect its people.
Interestingly, while Shlaim quotes “one estimate 83% of the casualties were civilians” he fails to mention or even hyperlink to a source. From our own research, we believe that this estimate is from the Al Haq organization, which according to NGO Monitor has ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group, engages in BDS activities and promotes lawfare against Israel.
Revising History
Shlaim then attempts to place the blame for the war on Israel for violating a ceasefire. But it all goes horribly wrong:
In June 2008 Egypt had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that rules Gaza. The agreement called on both sides to cease hostilities and required Israel to gradually ease the illegal blockade it had imposed on the Gaza Strip in June 2007. This ceasefire worked remarkably well – until Israel violated it by a raid on 4 November in which six Hamas fighters were killed. The monthly average of rockets fired from Gaza on Israel fell from 179 in the first half of 2008 to three between June and October.
Yes you read that correctly: A monthly average of three rockets fired from Gaza isn’t deemed to have broken the ceasefire yet an Israeli operation to destroy the opening of a cross-border attack tunnel aimed at kidnapping IDF soldiers is.
In Shlaim’s warped world, Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israel aren’t deemed to be violations, not to mention the fact that Hamas used the ceasefire as an opportunity to build up its arms and terrorist infrastructure.
Faulty “Evidence”
Shlaim then presents his “evidence” of how war could have been avoided by recounting a story told to him by an academic and senior adviser on conflict resolution in the Middle East at the Carter Center who had met with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus.
According to this story “Mashaal handed him a written proposal on how to restore the ceasefire. In effect, it was a proposal to renew the June 2008 ceasefire agreement on the original terms.”
That rockets were continuing to rain down on Israel’s south as Hamas sought to renegotiate a ceasefire on its own terms appears to have been lost somewhere in this story. It was Israel during this period that was exercising maximum restraint in the face of constant attacks. (Also remember that Iron Dome did not exist at this point to neutralize or mitigate these rocket attacks.)
That this Carter Center (yes the same Jimmy Carter who’s disdain for Israel is well-known) figure was not treated seriously by Israeli government sources is hardly earth shattering. Yet for Shlaim, this story
was indeed a critical moment and it conveyed a clear message: if Israel’s real purpose was to protect its civilians, all it needed to do was to follow Hamas’s example by observing the ceasefire.
What alternate reality is Shlaim living in?! Hamas wasn’t setting any example. It wasn’t observing any ceasefire at all. It was attacking Israeli civilians.
Ask yourself why Israel should have backed down in the face of Hamas attacks? Why should a terrorist group be allowed to dictate terms to any democratic state?
Revisiting the UN’s Goldstone Report
Shlaim then goes on to reference at length the discredited UN Goldstone Report as a means to prove that Israel had launched Operation Cast Lead as a disproportionate and unlawful assault on the civilian population of Gaza.
Even the lead author of the report, Judge Richard Goldstone, eventually recanted in a Washington Post op-ed, stating: “I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.”
Goldstone starkly admitted, “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”
For Shlaim, however, this is irrelevant as he pushes his discredited claims.
The claim that the operation was designed to “terrorise a civilian population” needs underlining. Terrorism is the use of force against civilians for political purposes. By this definition Operation Cast Lead was an act of state terrorism.
It is telling that nowhere else in his piece does Shlaim mention terror or terrorism. In Shlaim’s eyes, Hamas attacks aren’t terrorism. Only Israel is capable of such a crime.
Indeed, Hamas is never held responsible by Shlaim for the situation of Gaza, which he describes as a “prison” and all subsequent Israeli military operations against Hamas as “offensive attacks on defenceless civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
Shlaim writes:
Israeli generals talk about their recurrent military incursions into Gaza as “mowing the lawn”. This operative metaphor implies a task that has to be performed regularly and mechanically and without end. It also alludes to the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and the inflicting of damage on civilian infrastructure that takes several years to repair.
Yes Israel has had to carry out repeated military operations. Why? Because Hamas terrorism continues and Israel has a duty to respond in order to protect its civilians.
While Shlaim claim that “mowing the lawn” (read more about this military concept here) “alludes to the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians,” there is only one side that intentionally sets out to achieve this. While Hamas sends its rockets indiscriminately at civilian targets (a war crime), Israel has proven time and again that it takes enormous efforts to avoid civilian casualties and that its operations are deliberately targeted against terrorists and terrorist infrastructure. This within the complications caused by Hamas deliberately embedding itself within the civilian population of Gaza.
That Shlaim concludes by referring to Israel’s
shunning of diplomacy and repeated resort to brute military force in response to all manifestations of lawful resistance and peaceful protest on its southern border
is the final piece of evidence that this Oxford professor is blinded by his sympathy for terror. One wonders just how far his definition of “lawful resistance” extends given his refusal to define Hamas actions as terror.
It appears that ten years after Operation Cast Lead, commentators such as Avi Shlaim are attempting to alter both history and reality in order to attack Israel.
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