Far from Self-Defense

The military onslaught on Gaza last week has been cripplingly devastating for the 1.5 million Palestinians who live—or lived—there. Already, over 400 Palestinians have died, with over 200 killed on the first day of the offensive—the single bloodiest since 1967. Over 1400 are wounded—the majority of whom are women and children—and receiving inadequate medical attention due, in large part, to the long-term Israeli blockade of the Strip.

Yet last Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni unabashedly asserted, “There is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.” That Livni arrived at this conclusion—despite reports from the United Nations, the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Oxfam International and Human Rights Watch—reflects the irreverence with which the Israeli government regards Palestinian lives. Indeed, there is no other explanation. How else could a week of aerial bombing of such a densely populated city and intentionally starving its citizens be justified?

Israel’s defenders say the attacks are a legitimate response to Hamas’ rocket-fire, and a clear case of self-defense. Anyone with a political memory longer than three weeks, however, knows how utterly hollow this statement is in light of the months-long blockade of Gaza. Israeli blockades of fuel, electricity, and food supplies from Gaza, which have been in place for well over a year, have drastically affected homes, businesses and hospitals in a region where 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, the most devastating effects of which are seen in the chronic malnutrition of Gazan children. Before the attacks, 60 percent of Gazans received running water once every 5-7 days and less than 30 percent had a reliable source of food, leaving families scavenging for grass to survive. That is not self-defense. It is systematic violence of the highest order, compounded exponentially by the recent military assault on Gaza.

Though the U.S. and Israeli administrations paint Hamas’ rocket fire as unprovoked acts of terrorism, they fail to acknowledge the tortuous blockade as an underlying—though by no means invisible—cause of Hamas’ attacks. Moreover, American foreign policy has eliminated any possibilities for diplomacy, leaving Hamas with little option, given a starving population locked within the prison-like Strip. The accepted double standards that enable Israel supporters to support such a catastrophic response to one death under the pretense of “self-defense,” yet censure Hamas for using violence to call international attention the slow killing of its 1.5 million citizens, is profoundly troubling. To condemn Hamas without acknowledging that they were elected democratically, that they are the only organization offering tangible social services to the suffering citizens of Gaza, and that they are acting out against a sustained, violent occupation, does nothing to advance the peace process. It is worth remembering that Hamas’ rockets were wildly inefficient, homemade devices incapable of posing a real threat to the world’s fourth-largest military power. While this is not a defense of many of their poor political choices, it further highlights the disproportion of Israel’s so-called “targeted” response.

If the strikes themselves are targeted, as Israeli officials insist, then their targets must have been the houses, schools, mosques, universities, refugee centers, and hospitals that have been decimated in the past week. If not, then Israel had already decided that the entire infrastructure of this already impoverished city was dispensable collateral damage in its hunt for a few Hamas militants. Major newspapers carried the story of five daughters of the Balousha family, who were killed while hiding in a mosque that Israel bombed alongside one of its other targets: the Jabalya refugee center. Ha’aretz writer Amira Hass reported that, despite military intelligence, Israel chose to bomb in the vicinity of elementary schools precisely after children were dismissed, when they would be out in the streets. Whether the murder of children was calculated malice or callous indifference, it exemplifies the abhorrent behavior of Israeli senior officials in this campaign.

In any case, the widespread destruction certainly was calculated, despite contrary official reports. Not only does Israel commit such crimes against humanity, they announce them brazenly. Last October, Israel’s Northern Command General Gadi Eisenkot said to Ha’aretz reporters: “What happened in the Dahiya quarter in Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired upon. We will apply disproportionate force upon it and cause great damage and destruction there… From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.” Such an open admission of the intent to inflict maximum damage, no matter the severity of the initial threat, wholly invalidates the popular claim that Israel is targeting only Hamas. According to Eisenkot, anyone within these “civilian villages” becomes a justifiable military target, including young children. Collective punishment is a far too diplomatic term for such a ruthless strategy. Ali Abunimah, a prolific Arab-American author and blogger, perhaps put it best when he asked, is this a taste of the “bigger shoah” (Hebrew for Holocaust) that Israel’s deputy defense minister threatened?


Nadia O. Gaber ’09-’10, a Crimson editorial writer, is a history and literature and women, gender, and sexuality concentrator in Kirkland House.