There is no future for any of us in calculated madness

By John Grant

Most Americans hope sanity prevails and the cease fire between Israel and Gaza holds.  The 23-day Israeli assault killed over 1300 Gazans, almost a third of them  kids, according to UN estimates. The assault used white phosphorus weapons in urban streets and purposely destroyed numerous government and academic institutions.  According to Shlomo Brom, a former general in the Israeli Defense Force, it was a case of “calculated madness.”

In Richard Nixon’s day, this approach was called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and was meant to deter the Russians.  The Israelis hope that by making Palestinians think they are crazy enough to obliterate Palestinian life and culture that a deterrent will be established in Palestinian minds. This will help Palestinians accept, as former Israeli Defense Forces Chief Of Staff Moshe Yaalon put it, that they are “a defeated people.”

Given Israel is part of the modern, western world and must live under the gaze of instant media, this is as far as Israel can go in what counter-insurgency expert William Polk suggests is the most effective method of counter-insurgency war: scorched earth.

Polk studied the Algerian War while in JFK’s state department.  His conclusions applied to Vietnam were rejected at the time but turned out to be prescient.   In his book, Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerrilla War From the American Revolution To Iraq, he writes that no matter how much money and arms are thrown at a counter-insurgency effort, “foreigners cannot militarily defeat a determined insurgency except by virtual genocide.”

Israelis would argue they are not “foreigners” like we were in Vietnam or like we certainly are now in Afghanistan.  And Israelis do have roots in the area reaching way into the past — as do Palestinians.  And that is the problem.

I cannot defend Hamas lobbing mortars into Israel – no matter how ineffectual they may be.  But the proportionality argument is a strong one against Israel.

It’s as if you decided to move back into the house you lived in as a kid and locked the residents living there in the cellar.  Then, you insist on using the cellar to do your laundry and other tasks.  At gunpoint, you restrict when the people in the cellar can exit and enter the house.  When these imprisoned folks get so frustrated they begin to shoot randomly up through the floorboards, instead of returning the gesture with randomly fired shots down through the floorboards, you open the cellar door and toss down dozens of grenades.

Stories from Gaza about an Israeli-friendly Palestinian surgeon burying two of his little daughters, a well-off, pro-Fatah Gazan named Ziad Dardasawi whose uncle’s house was destroyed and Mrs. Sabah Abu Halima, whose husband and four kids died when her home was hit with white phosphorus, don’t bode well for long term deterrence.

Instead, they foretell an increase of the hatred and the madness.  Dardasawi told The New York Times, “Israel is breeding extremists.”  Mrs Halima said her family used to sell produce to Israelis, but now she wants Israeli leaders to “burn like my children burned.”

To bring this all home to roost, in a recent Times report, an Israeli IDF spokesman actually cited the US “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq as a precedent for its “calculated madness” in Gaza.

The Bush regime modeled its anti-terrorist tactics on Israel’s tough tactics.  Now we see Israel paying the favor back by modeling its assault on our invasion of Iraq.  Of course, the misguided Bush invasion and occupation helped drive the US into the state of moral and financial bankruptcy we now find ourselves in around the world.

The coincident ascendancy of George Bush here and Ariel Sharon in Israel seems, in retrospect, to have been a marriage made in Hell.  On one hand, you have a tiny, arrogant nation surrounded by bitter enemies, and on the other you have the most powerful nation in the world surrounded by two vast oceans and two friendly nations.  How two such vastly different nations with vastly different problems came to be in such a tightly bound cycle of mutual influence could turn out to be one of the major tragedies of the 21st century.

We can only hope the new Obama administration will change course in the Middle East and use its calm brainpower instead of more bombs.  Let’s hope it will take a less one-sided position on the deteriorating situation in Israel/Palestine.

One thing Israel’s Gaza debacle may do is ratchet the struggle up to the patron level: the United States versus Iran.  At that level, opening a process of talks with Iran might help.  We don’t have to like them.  Let’s further hope that Israel can recognize Hamas and that Hamas can recognize Israel.  Maybe it’s a case of: “You first!”  “No, you first!”  In which case, maybe someone can figure out how they can do it simultaneously.

It may be a bit overused by now, but it’s true: this is a New Dawn in which Diplomacy and the recognition of human complexity in political life must trump War and the simple demonization of others.  War and militarism are driving us bankrupt.

John Grant is a Vietnam veteran and a member of Veterans For Peace.  He is a writer/photographer living in Plymouth Meeting.