- 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.
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- 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.
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- They have three options:
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- - to conduct a real investigation.
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- - to ignore the demand and proceed as if nothing has
happened.
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- - to conduct a sham inquiry.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 themself.
Its conclusions are binding.
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- This law has an interesting history. Sometime in the
50s, 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.)
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- Ben-Gurion's request was denied, under the pretext that
there was no law for such a procedure. Furious, Ben-Gurion resigned from
the government and left his party. In one of the stormy party sessions,
the Minister of Justice, Yaakov Shimshon Shapira, called Ben-Gurion a "fascist".
But Shapira, an old Russian Jew, regretted his outburst later. He drafted
a special law for the appointment of Commissions of Investigation in the
future. After lengthy deliberations in the Knesset (in which I took an
active part) the law was adopted and has since been applied, notably in
the case of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
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- Now I wholeheartedly support the setting up of a Commission
of Investigation according to this law.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- In their opinion, even if their refusal has severe international
repercussions, the consequences of any investigation, even a phony one,
would be far worse.
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- 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. When he announces that such and such is
the "position of the army", no mere politician present would
dare to object.
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- In the "Only Democracy in the Middle East",
the law (proposed at the time by Menachem Begin) stipulates that the Government
as such is the Commander in Chief of the Israel Defense Forces. That is
the theory. In practice, no decision at variance with the "position
of the army" has ever been or will ever be adopted.
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- The army claims to be investigating itself. Ehud Barak
represents willingly or unwillingly this position. The cabinet
has postponed dealing with the matter, and that's where things stand today.
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- ON THIS occasion, the spotlight should be turned on the
least visible person in Israel: the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant
General Gabi Ashkenazi, the ultimate Teflon-man. Nothing sticks to him.
In this debate, as in all others, he just is not there.
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- Everybody knows that Ashkenazi is a shy and modest man.
He hardly ever speaks, writes or speechifies. On television, he merges
into the background.
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- This is how he looks to the public: an honest soldier,
without tricks or ploys, who does his duty quietly, receives his orders
from the government and fulfills them loyally. In this he differs from
almost all his predecessors, who were boastful, publicity-crazy and loquacious.
While most them came from famous elite units or the arrogant Air Force,
he is a grey infantry man. The Duke of Wellington, seeing the huge amount
of paperwork in his army, once exclaimed: "Soldiers should fight,
not write!" He would have liked Ashkenazi
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- 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.
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- If an indictment were issued by the International Court
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.
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- THE POLITICIANS who oppose (ever so quietly) the Chief
of Staff's position believe that it is impossible to withstand international
pressure completely, and that some kind of an inquiry will have to be conducted.
Since not one of them intends to hold a real investigation, they propose
to follow a tried and trusted Israeli method, which has worked wonderfully
hundreds of times in the past: the method of sham.
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- A sham inquiry. Sham conclusions. Sham adherence to international
law. Sham civilian control over the military.
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- 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. Generals will speak about our inalienable right to self-defense.
In the end, two or three junior officers or privates may be found guilty
of "irregularities".
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- IN THE meantime, international pressure on Israel is
increasing. Even now it has reached unprecedented proportions.
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- 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.
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- This raises the question once more: can outside pressure
have an impact on Israel?
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- Certainly it can. The question is: what kind of pressure,
what kind of impact?
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- 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: Perhaps Goldstone is right? Except for the usual suspects,
no one in the media, the Knesset or the government has asked: Perhaps war
crimes have indeed been committed? The outside pressure has not forced
such questions to be raised. They must come from the inside, from the public
itself.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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?
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