According to a Chinese saying, if someone in the street tells you that you are drunk, you can laugh. If a second person tells you that you are drunk, start to think about it. If a third one tells you the same, go home and sleep it off.
Our political and military leadership has already encountered the third, fourth and fifth person. All of them say that they must investigate what happened in the “Molten Lead” operation.
They have three options:
• to conduct a real investigation.
• to ignore the demand and proceed as if nothing has happened.
• to conduct a sham inquiry.
It is easy to dismiss the first option: It has not the slightest chance of being adopted. Except for the usual suspects (including myself) who demanded an investigation long before anyone in Israel had heard of a judge called Goldstone, nobody supports it. Among all the members of our political, military and media establishments who are now suggesting an “inquiry”, there is no one — literally not one — who means by that a real investigation. The aim is to deceive the goyim and get them to shut up.
Actually, Israeli law lays down clear guidelines for such investigations. The government decides to set up a commission of investigation. The president of the Supreme Court then appoints the members of the commission. The commission can compel witnesses to testify. Anybody who may be damaged by its conclusions must be warned and given the opportunity to defend themselves. Its conclusions are binding. This law has an interesting history. Sometime in the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion demanded the appointment of a “judicial committee of inquiry” to decide who gave the orders for the 1954 “security mishap,” also known as the Lavon Affair. (A false flag operation where an espionage network composed of local Jews was activated to bomb American and British offices in Egypt, in order to cause friction between Egypt and the Western powers. The perpetrators were caught.)
Now I wholeheartedly support the setting up of a commission of investigation according to this law.
The second option is the one proposed by the army chief of staff and the minister of defense. In America it is called “stonewalling.” Meaning: To hell with it.
The army commanders object to any investigation and any inquiry whatsoever. They probably know why. After all, they know the facts. They know that a dark shadow lies over the very decision to go to war, over the planning of the operation, over the instructions given to the troops, and over many dozens of large and small acts committed during the operation.
In their opinion, even if their refusal has severe international repercussions, the consequences of any investigation, even a phony one, would be far worse.
As long as the chief of staff sticks to this position, there will be no investigation outside the army, whatever the attitude of the ministers. The army chief, who attends every Cabinet meeting, is the largest figure in the room. On this occasion, the spotlight should be turned on the least visible person in Israel: the chief of the general staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the ultimate Teflon-man. Nothing sticks to him. In this debate, as in all others, he just is not there.
Everybody knows that Ashkenazi is a shy and modest man. He hardly ever speaks, writes or speechifies. On television, he merges into the background.
But reality is not always what it seems. Ashkenazi plays a central role in the decision-making process. He was appointed after his predecessor, Dan Halutz, resigned after the failures of Lebanon War II. Under Ashkenazi’s leadership, new doctrines were formulated and put into action in the “Molten Lead” operation. I defined them (on my own responsibility) as “Zero Losses” and “Better to kill a hundred enemy civilians than to lose one of our own soldiers”. Since the Gaza war did not lead to a single soldier being put on trial, Ashkenazi must bear the responsibility for everything that happened there.
If an indictment were issued by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Ashkenazi would probably be accorded the place of honor as “Defendant No. 1.” No wonder that he objects to any outside investigation, as does Ehud Barak, who would probably occupy the No. 2 place.
A sham inquiry. Sham conclusions. Sham adherence to international law. Sham civilian control over the military. Nothing simpler than that. An “inquiry committee” (but not a commission of investigation according to the law) will be set up, chaired by a suitably patriotic judge and composed of carefully chosen honorable citizens who are all “one of us”. Testimonies will be heard behind closed doors (for considerations of security, of course). Army lawyers will prove that everything was perfectly legal, the national whitewasher, professor Asa Kasher, will laud the ethics of the most moral army in the World. Israel’s friends all over the world will break into an ecstatic chorus: What a lawful state! What a democracy! What morality! Western governments will declare that justice has been done and the case closed. The US veto will see to the rest.
So why don’t the army chiefs accept this proposal? Because they are afraid things might not proceed quite so smoothly. The international community will demand that at least part of the hearings be conducted in open court. There will be a demand for the presence of international observers. And, most importantly: there will be no justifiable way to exclude the testimonies of the Gazans themselves. Things will get complicated. The world will not accept fabricated conclusions. In the end we will be in exactly the same situation. Better to stay put and brave it out, whatever the price.
In the meantime, international pressure on Israel is increasing. Even now it has reached unprecedented proportions.
Russia and China have voted in favor of the endorsement of the Goldstone Report by the UN. The UK and France “did not take part in the vote”, but demanded that Israel conduct a real investigation. We have quarreled with Turkey, until now an important military ally. We have altercations with Sweden, Norway and a number of other friendly countries. The French foreign minister has been prevented from crossing into the Gaza Strip and is furious. The already cold peace with Egypt and Jordan has become several degrees colder. Israel is boycotted in many forums. Senior army officers are afraid to travel abroad for fear of arrest.
This raises the question once more: can outside pressure have an impact on Israel?
Certainly it can. The question is: what kind of pressure, what kind of impact?
The pressure has indeed convinced several ministers that an inquiry committee for the Goldstone Report has to be set up. But no one in the Israeli establishment — no one at all! — has raised the real question: However, the outside pressure has not forced such questions to be raised. They must come from the inside, from the public itself.
The kind of pressure must also be considered. The Goldstone Report has an impact on the world because it is precise and targeted: a specific operation, for which specific persons are responsible. It raises a specific demand: an investigation. It attacks a clear and well-defined target: war crimes.
If we apply this to the debate about boycotting Israel: the Goldstone Report may be compared to a targeted boycott on the settlements and their helpers, not an unlimited boycott of the State of Israel. A targeted boycott can have a positive impact. A comprehensive, unlimited boycott would — in my opinion — achieve the opposite. It would push the Israeli public further into the arms of the extreme right.
The struggle over the Goldstone Report is now at its height. In Jerusalem, the rising energy of the waves can be clearly felt. Does this portend a tsunami?
