If anyone ever had any doubts about the sheer malevolence that is Israel, the military’s offensive to free a captured Israeli solider settles the matter once and for all. Its outrageously disproportionate rampage through Gaza — seizing Hamas ministers and MPs, bombing bridges and a power station and ordering ordinary Palestinians to leave their homes, which may be targeted — is proof of its fundamental militancy. They are the actions not of a responsible state seeking the release of one of its soldiers but of an enraged thug. Israel could have asked international mediators to secure the release of the soldier — but no, there is to be no negotiations, no diplomacy, just reprisals and an iron fist.
It is collective punishment — punishing all the Palestinians for the actions of the few. It is totally illegal under the Geneva Convention. It is the same evil policy the Nazis used in World War II in places they occupied and terrorized, executing ten locals for every German soldier killed, wiping out entire villages in reprisal for attacks by the local resistance.
The world had no problem seeing the evil in what the Nazis did; it should not have any difficulty in seeing the same today. The Bush administration though, almost alone, remains willfully blind, its comment that Israel has a right to defend the lives of its citizens is vile in the circumstances. If any other country acted so disproportionately, Washington would lead the condemnation. But for Israel, considerations are different. Does anyone wonder why so many people in the world distrust, even hate, the US when it is so hypocritically unquestioning of anything Israel does?
The chief villain in this case, though, is Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He is the war criminal here, the one from whom a reckoning must be demanded. He ordered this blitz, he threatens “extreme action” to free the soldier, it is he who has turned an incident into a full-scale war. He is even threatening Syria, warning it not to give any further shelter to Hamas’ political chief, Khaled Meshaal, and sending warplanes to buzz the summer palace of President Bashar Assad to ram home the message.
Is it any wonder people talk about Israel and state terrorism in the same breath? The iron fist smashing through Gaza is politically motivated terror. But it is about much more than punishing the Palestinian for the actions of a few. Olmert is shamelessly exploiting the abduction. His accusation — that he considers the entire Palestinian leadership, not just Hamas but President Mahmoud Abbas who in fact condemned the seizure, to be responsible for the man’s safety — shows his real intentions. Olmert is out to terrorize the Palestinians into a state of feeble submission for having dared to elect a Hamas government.
But this sort of terrorism did not work for the Nazis and has been shown, time and again, that it does not work for the Israelis either. The Palestinians are not intimidated, have not been intimidated and will not be intimidated in future. The rampage in Gaza will achieve nothing other than greater hate for Israel, and in the wider world, greater condemnation.
