US Positions on Israel's Attacks

There has been some great commentary on the Israel-Palestine issue at The War in Context, Sic Semper Tyrannis, and other sites, so I'm going to keep this one relatively short. Glenn Greenwald had this observation that, while the majority of the United States citizens really don't want to take sides in this conflict, the members of Congress certainly are (and perhaps not surprisingly). One has to ask the question, are our representatives doing right by us by this action?

Anyone minimally objective and well-intentioned finds Hamas rocket attacks on random Israeli civilians to be highly objectionable and wrong, but even among those who do, one finds a wide range of views regarding the Israeli offensive.  But not among America's political leadership.  There, one finds total, lockstep uniformity almost more unyielding than what one finds among Israeli leaders themselves -- as though Israel's wars are, by definition, America's wars; its enemies are our enemies; its disputes and conflicts and interests are, inherently, ours; and America's only duty when Israel fights is to support it uncritically.
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Americans shouldn't be in the position of endlessly debating Israel's security situation and its endless religious and territorial conflicts with its neighbors.  That should be for Israeli citizens to do, not for Americans.  But that distinction -- between the U.S. and Israel -- barely exists because our political leaders have all but eliminated it, and have thus imposed on U.S. citizens responsibility for the acts of Israel.

And make no mistake, we do have a responsibility for the acts of Israel. At the least, as Glenn points out near the bottom, our military-industrial complex has provided the bombs, not just for Gaza, but also that fine little adventure in Lebanon a few years ago. Information on the GBU-39 munitions follow:

The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world. The 113 kg. bomb has the same penetration capabilities as a normal 900 kg. bomb, although it has only 22.7 kg. of explosives. At just 1.75 meters long, its small size increases the number of bombs an aircraft can carry and the number of targets it can attack in a sortie.

Tests conducted in the US have proven that the bomb is capable of penetrating at least 90 cm. of steel-reinforced concrete. The GBU-39 can be used in adverse weather conditions and has a standoff range of more than 110 km. due to pop-out wings.
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Yiftah Shapir, from the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said the GBU-39 is one of the most advanced in the world and would improve Israel's standoff fire capabilities.

"The bomb is extremely accurate," he said. "All you have to do is punch in the coordinates, fire and forget."

He said they could be used to attack Iranian underground facilities like Natanz but that they could only penetrate a few meters.

"Hundreds of these would have to be used in an attack on Natanz for it to be successful," Shapir said.

So when you wonder why America's image in the Middle East is so tarnished, consider the enabler role that our nation plays in Israel's actions. As Matt Yglesias points out, the option to just decry both sides in this conflict while in practice heavily favoring the one really ought not be considered an option.

Comments

[infocyde]

Mess with the bull, get the horns. If Mexico were lobbing random rockets into San Diego, I would hope that our minimal response would be like Israel's. And we can go into the long history of the region, and try to do the typical lazy American left's ying yang analysis (both sides are at fault), but if you truely analyze the situation, the Israelis are definately as close as it gets to the good guys here. If Hamas had the kind of power Israel had, or Iran, or Syria, or Egypt, there would be no Israel.

I'm with our politicians, I support Israel. I don't like seeing innocents get killed, but the other side needs to learn that the terrorist methodology for trying to gain political concessions from Israel WILL NEVER work and will only be rewarded by pain.

[Andy]

Americans shouldn't be in the position of endlessly debating Israel's security situation and its endless religious and territorial conflicts with its neighbors. That should be for Israeli citizens to do, not for Americans.

WTF is he talking about? We do that will all our allies. What does he think "alliance" means?

[James]

The effective response to guerrilla activity hasn't changed since the time of the Romans: you isolate the radicals politically and then hunt them down. Israel and the US believe that engineering global sanctions against Hamas isolates them, but this is simply not so. Hamas' power base is the Palestinian people. They have to be separated from their constituency to be vulnerable.

In order to do this, the radicals and the moderates have to be divided. This is done by engaging the moderates politically, addressing their grievances, and making concessions that legitimize them in the eyes of the broader public and give them something to lose in the event of renewed conflict. Undertaking military action in the absence of political action is pointless; all the bickering about "proportionality" and "self-defense" and even military effectiveness is missing the broader point. There will be no peace in the Middle East until the Palestinians have a contiguous homeland free of occupation.

Hamas won't accept any West Bank deal over the long term, but it's not necessary for them to do so. The general population of Palestinians will accept a two-state solution and their current support of Hamas and the other radical elements is based on the existence and expansion of the settlements. Palestinians are generally radicalized because they have nothing to lose.

All the US' and Israel's stated goals on the West Bank could be realized if the Israeli government marched into a conference room with Fatah and made a deal that dismantled the settlements. Fatah would be rewarded for its moderate message, peacemaking would be seen as a viable strategy, Hamas would be the odd man out, and the Palestinian people would be bouyed by the possibility of a permanent resolution to the dispute. But this isn't going to happen. Israel and the US believe that supporting Fatah means giving them money (which only fuels corruption) and international recognition (which means precisely nothing to the Palestinian people). The Fatah leadership is thus able to preen at international conferences in Mercedes Benzes while the settlements and checkpoints expand. The process neatly separates the Fatah leadership from their base, whose loyalty is transferred to Hamas. The message is clear: Fatah can't deliver anything to the Palestinian people but they are doing pretty well for themselves.

Bad strategy cannot be fixed with good tactics. Even if they kill every Hamas leader it will only mean different leaders will appear. Different, but not very different. The attacks will continue. The Palestinians will continue to support them, despite reprisals. The war will go on until Israel agrees to evacuate the West Bank. The US and Israel's military dominance is not permanent. Now would be a really good time to get out of the West Bank. Five years ago would have been better; it might have actually supported Bush's notional democratization campaign in the Middle East. But it's not going to happen so the whole matter is hardly worth arguing about. There's no point in "supporting Israel" if Israel refuses to do the one thing that would actually help them both internally and externally. Any discussion about the matter that doesn't begin and end with a timetable for evacuating the settlements is totally irrelevant.

[J.]

Come on, Andy. Alliances for the purpose of mutual defense are common - what we have toward Israel is pathological. The obsession that our govt has over Israel's continued survival made sense in the 1960s through 1980s, but certainly Israel can stand by itself today just as all of our other European allies do. We do not obsess so much over the European Union's very low investments in military capability, nor do we adequately discuss the issue of border security and narco-terrorism in Mexico and the southern hemisphere. But OH MY GAWD we have to studiously ignore Israel's justifications and applaud its bombing civilian infrastructure as "justifiable warfare."

If Israel decides it has to disproportionately retaliate - oh, excuse me, "pre-empt" Hamas rocket attacks, fine. Just don't do it on our dime, and don't expect us to applaud as more than 400 Palestinians die because of 2 Israeli deaths caused by Hamas rockets. It's pretty clear that this is an exercise designed to influence Israel's elections in February, and frankly, I'm tired of politicians committing massive bloodletting in the name of "national security" as a way to influence elections.

[Andy]

J,

We have alliances with a lot of people. Almost always, we give them the benefit of the doubt if they decide to attack an enemy.

Israel is unique in that it's been in de facto war with its neighbors for decades and it's in actual combat with its adversaries more often than others.

Even so, we don't say much when any number of our allies commit acts of violence - many against their own citizens. Of course most of that doesn't even make the press while every fart in Gaza makes it to the BBC. For example, a little over two weeks ago, the Philippine military killed 50 "militants." How many people do you think know there is even a war there, much less that a few score got killed? Do you think anything would be different if those 50 KIA were in Gaza and not some PI island shithole? Same goes for Saudi, Egypt, Turkey, Columbia and others. There's not much opposition in Congress or anywhere else when any of our allies go on punitive expeditions against their enemies, be they Muslim Brotherhood, Kurd, FARC, MILF or whatever. What did Congress have to say when Georgia provoked the Russians? Little to nothing bad about Georgia!

The fact is that our politicians don't criticize our allies very often. Israel is not an exception - it's the rule. And THAT is what GG doesn't understand.

Furthermore your example of Europe is not comparable at all. Europe isn't at war with anyone, they aren't fighting any insurgencies - they're mostly sitting around living the good life. If the Europeans were engaged in near-continuous military operations like many of our other allies are (including Israel), things would be different.

Now, one might argue that we shouldn't be allies with Israel. That's a different question that what GG says when he claims that Americans are somehow put upon by being in the position of debating Israel's security situation or that the solid support for Israel's military actions is somehow unique among our allies. It is not.

[Kilo]

"All you have to do is punch in the coordinates, fire and forget."

This never has been and never will be a positive statement. I don't care how happy you are about your guided weapon, do not tell people that you have either the ability, option or desire to forget where you sent it.