POST GAZA ANALYSIS

Kipa Man is a store with thousands of what Americans call yamakas or those cute little hats that Jewish men wear to cover their head before God, assuming of course that God is above us and looking down on our heads. If you believe God is below you, then you must always wear socks, but that is probably a different religion. Anyway, note in the lower left side of the picture is the UC Berkeley, CAL athletics logo, I thought that was pretty cool.

Before I get started on my first Gaza blog, check out this great YouTube video by the guy who just made Waltz with Beshir.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aJZGl15awE

When I last left Israel (September, 2008) the glow had worn off the 2nd Lebanese War and the general consensus was that mistakes had been made, planning was poor and the goal of weakening Hezbolla had not been accomplished. When I came back to Israel (January, 2009) the glow on the just concluded Gaza War was STILL bright. The mistake of too many Israelis killed had been corrected (only 13, half of which were by friendly fire or mistake), planning had been going on for over a year and the goal of stopping the rocket attacks, seemed within reach.

What struck me most was the unanimity of support for the Gaza War. Friends who I would have thought were otherwise 'peaceniks" would say things like, "they lob rockets into our towns, what do you expect us to do, nothing!" Reports coming out from the IDF were clear, "Lessons had been learned from Lebanon." It was estimated that 90+% of Israelis supported the war.

Recently it feels like the worm has turned. First of all, rockets still come out of Gaza, but not as many and it seems that the popularity of Hamas is still high in Gaza and higher than ever in the West Bank. So to many Israelis (I saw a 50% figure) that means the war was ended too soon and "they should have stayed in to finish the job." This, of course, is the same group that wants to preemptively bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities and is similar to the 27% of Americans who still think Bush is doing a good job.

But a new objection has recently emerged coming from war stories of returning soldiers. They range from a clear cut example of an old woman being shot and killed for no reason, to the bizarre practice of writing "Kill All Arabs" in excrement on the walls of the living rooms of occupied homes. (I am told that this is a common cheer at soccer games) Put in simple terms, it seems that many of the disturbing images I heard about or saw while in the U.S. (and not seen by Israelis) actually happened. Suffice it to say, this has totally shocked the Israeli public. I am reminded of how shocked Americans were to see the photos coming out of Abu Grab.

I must admit that the newspapers have been all over this story writing in depth about the soldier's experiences. There was a leaked memo telling soldiers to shoot at rescuers, quotes from officers that its "cool" in Gaza because you can treat everyone as though they were a terrorist target and a pamphlet from the IDF head Rabbi calling for a holy war against the Arabs.

The best article I saw was from Gideon Levy and confirmed a comment that I think Alan Dershowitz once made that more criticism of Israeli policies appear in the Israeli press than anywhere else in the world. If interested check out:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072821.html

I have seen so many English books on the shelves from not only Israeli revisionist historians (one guy I'm reading denies the Passover story and says Jews were not slaves in Egypt and there was no exodus) to many Palestinian intellectuals with excellent and biting analysis of the Israeli occupation. I don't mean to sound naive, but within limits, Israel does not appear to practice intellectual censorship. Maybe they don't have to because there is such a huge consensus of opinion which never seems to waiver.

The current mantra put out by the Defense Minister Barak is that the IDF is the "most moral Army in the world," which is a curious oxymoron. (I wonder how the Vatican's Army feels about that) One is reminded of the line in A Man for All Season when the King threatens to behead Thomas More who responds, "this isn't Spain you know." So apparently it gives Israelis a good feeling to know that, "we aren't the Congolese Liberation Army, you know."

I want to conclude this analysis by making it clear that I will not be joining Hamas in the near future. One should not lose sight of the fact that nobody likes Hamas, and that includes Egypt which closed their border, Fatah which supported assassinations of Hamas leaders and even Syria/Hezbollah which never opened up a second northern front in support. The real irony of the situation was Hillary Clinton's offer of $900 million to rebuild the infrastructure that Israel had destroyed with the $2 billion of U.S. military aide (isn't that what we did in Iraq.) One guy is paid to dig the hole and then another guy is paid to fill it back up, but after all isn't that the lesson of war.