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Nineteen inhabitants of Beit Hanun were
killed with malice aforethought. There is no other way of describing the
circumstances of their killing. Someone who throws burning matches into
a forest can't claim he didn't mean to set it on fire, and anyone who
bombards residential neighborhoods with artillery can't claim he didn't
mean to kill innocent inhabitants.
Therefore it takes considerable gall and
cynicism to dare to claim that the Israel Defense Forces did not intend
to kill inhabitants of Beit Hanun. Even if there was a glitch in the
balancing of the aiming mechanism or in a component of the radar, a
mistake in the input of the data or a human error, the overwhelming,
crucial, shocking fact is that the IDF bombards helpless civilians. Even
shells that are supposedly aimed 200 meters from houses, into "open
areas," are intended to kill, and they do kill. In this respect, nothing
new happened on Wednesday morning in Gaza: The IDF has been behaving
like this for months now.
But this isn't just a matter of "the IDF," "the government" or "Israel"
bearing the responsibility. It must be said explicitly: The blame rests
directly on people who hold official positions, flesh-and-blood human
beings, and they must pay the price of their criminal responsibility for
needless killing. Attorney Avigdor Klagsbald caused the death of a woman
and her child without anyone imagining that he intended to hit them, but
nevertheless he is sitting in prison. And what about the killers of
women and children in Beit Hanun? Will they all be absolved? Will no one
be tried? Will no one even be reprimanded and shunned?
GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant will say with exasperating coolness
that apparently there was "a problem with the battery's targeting
apparatus," without moving a facial muscle, and will that be enough?
Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh will say, "The IDF is militarily
responsible, but not morally responsible," and will he thus exculpate
himself?
And who will bear the responsibility for the renewal of the terror
attacks? Only Hamas? Who will be accused of the tumble in Israel's
status and its depiction as a violent, leper state, and who will be
judged for the danger that hovers over world Jewry in the wake of the
IDF's acts? The electronic component that went on the blink in the
radar?
No one is guilty in Israel. There is never anyone guilty in Israel. The
prime minister who is responsible for the brutal policy toward the
Palestinians, the defense minister who knew about and approved the
bombardments, the chief of staff, the chief of command and the commander
of the division who gave the orders to bombard - not one of them is
guilty. They will continue with the work of killing as though nothing
has happened: The sun shone, the system flourished and the ritual
slaughterer slaughtered. They will continue to pursue the routine of
their daily lives, accepted in society like anyone else, and remain in
their posts despite the blood on their hands.
A few hours after the disaster, while the Gaza Strip was still enveloped
in sorrow and deep in shock, the air force was already hastening to
carry out another targeted killing, an arrogant demonstration of just
how much this disaster does not concern us.
Israel after the disaster was split: There were those who did their duty
and "expressed sorrow," like the prime minister and the defense
minister, and there were those who hastened with appalling insensitivity
to cast the responsibility onto the Palestinians, like the "moderate"
foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and the deputy defense minister from the
Labor Party, Sneh. The silent majority did not bother to emerge from its
yawning indifference. The entertainment shows on television continued to
make people laugh, and one of the radio stations even broadcast, in a
demonstrable lack of taste, Sarit Hadad's song "You're a Big Gun."
Mourning, of course, did not descend on Israel, and there was not even a
single manifestation of genuine participation in the sorrow. It did not
occur to Israel to promise compensation to the families and it did not
provide help, apart from transferring some of the wounded to hospitals
in Israel. We provided more aid to the victims of the earthquake in
Mexico, even though there we didn't have a hand in the disaster. For the
most part, the media were not very disturbed by the killing and devoted
less attention to it than to the Gay Pride parade.
A day or two after the disaster it was totally forgotten and other
affairs are filling our lives. But it is impossible just to go on to the
next item on the agenda. This disaster is not an act of God. There are
people who are clearly responsible for it, and they must be brought to
justice. The fact that the International Court of Justice in The Hague
still looks very far from Israel, and the various "Halutzes" and "Galants"
can still move around freely in the world, because in Israel they
forgive nearly everything, does not mean that war crimes are not being
committed here.
The IDF may well be a big gun, but an army that is responsible for
needless killing in such large dimensions, as in recent months in
Lebanon and in Gaza, is a failed and dangerous army that must urgently
be repaired. The Defense Forces are not only killing Arabs for no
reason, they are also directly endangering Israel's security, disgracing
it in the world and embroiling it again and again.
The heedless and arrogant reaction to such deeds contains a dangerous
moral message. If it is possible to dismiss mass killing with a wealth
of technical excuses, and not take any drastic measure against those who
are truly guilty of it, then Israel is saying that, as far as it is
concerned, nothing happened apart from the faulty component in the radar
system or the glitch in balancing the sights. But what happened at Beit
Hanun, what happened in Israel on the day after and what is continuing
to happen in Gaza day after day is a far more frightening distortion
than the calibrating of a gun sight.
http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22600/1/
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