Mark Steel: Now we've all seen through the Israeli government's excuses

If the Hamas rockets are so lethal, why doesn't Israel swap an F-16
for some?

Wednesday, 21 January 2009


The worrying part about whether the ceasefire in Gaza can hold together
will be whether the international community can stop the flow of arms
to the terrorists. Because Israel's getting their planes and tanks and
missiles from somewhere and until this supply is cut off there's every
chance it could start up again.


The disregard for life from these terrorists and their supporters is
shocking. For example Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist,
wrote that the purpose of the Israeli attack must be to "inflict a
heavy death toll and heavy pain on the Gaza population".

Replace "Gaza" with "western", and that could have been written by al-
Qa'ida. Maybe this is the problem: the Israelis are writing their
policies by downloading statements from an Islamic Jihad website and
just changing the place names. Also, if the Israelis think the Hamas
rockets are as lethal as they say, why don't they swap their F-16
fighters and Apachehelicopters for a few of them?

These things are capable of terrorising a whole nation for years
apparently, yet the Israelis have neglected to buy any, wasting their
money on gunboats and stuff. Given that their annual arms budget is $7.2
bn plus $2.2 bn in "aid", they'd save enough to buy a selection of
banks in every country in the world.

The military advantages would be enormous because the Israelis'
complaint about Hamas is the use of tunnels to smuggle arms. But if
Israel gave Hamas a few planes and tanks and helicopters, they could
probably be persuaded to shut down those tunnels that seem to be the
cause of such bad feeling.

Whatever you say about Israel, at least it moves its weapons about
legally ? except for when it secretly built a nuclear arsenal against
an array of international agreements. But they did it above ground and
not in a tunnel and that's the main thing.

Watching the reports from Gaza, another reason why the ceasefire may
break down becomes apparent. The Israelis might claim that their
satellite pictures now show Palestinians in possession of huge mounds
of rubble ? lethal if thrown over the border. Luckily these weapons are
easy to spot. Most of them are next to women howling, "Look what
they've done to my house," but perhaps the airforce should bomb them
again ? just in case. The Israelis say they fear Hamas will once again
break the ceasefire by sending over those rockets. But the whole point
of the operation was to make that impossible. Because they must have
asked themselves the question, "If we slaughter 1,300 people, including
300 children, is that likely to make people: A. less cross or B. more
cross?" And presumably they concluded it will make them much less
likely to grow up full of hatred and determination to retaliate.
Perhaps they saw medical research that shows when someone is suffering
from anxiety and bouts of irascible ill-tempered behaviour, the best
treatment is to pen them in with no food or medicine and then kill some
of them, and that calms them down a treat.

Another way to allay their worries about Hamas breaking the ceasefire
is to read the report from their government's own Intelligence and
Terrorism Information Centre. This states that during the ceasefire
"Hamas did not take part in any rocket fire and sometimes prevented
other organisations from attacking." Still, with all that's been going
on I suppose they haven't had time for reading.

Despite all this there might be one cheery sign, which is that never
before have so many people seen through the Israeli government's
excuses for handing out mass destruction. The demonstrations in support
of Palestinians have been bigger than ever before, and even the United
Nations and the Wall Street Journal have suggestedIsrael has committed
war crimes. One poll in America suggested that 60 per cent of people
opposed the bombardment, and the change of opinion reached the point
that an Israeli diplomat has admitted that "The harm to civilians in
Gaza is causing us huge damage."

Maybe, best of all, was genetics expert Steven Rose who appeared on
Radio 4's Today programme to talk about a new study that's located
"morality spots", the part of the brain that deals with our morality.
Asked how we could know whether this was true, he said in a
marvellously posh academic Radio 4 voice "Well we could test the brains
of the Israeli cabinet and see if they've got no morality spots
whatsoever."

And the most immoral part of all is the perfectly cynical timing, as if
three weeks ago Bush shouted: "Last orders please. Any last bombing,
before time's up? Come along now, haven't you got homes to demolish?"

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