This Will Sicken You
By Larry Johnson on January 11, 2009 at 4:39 PM in Current Affairs
Warning. The images below the fold are horrific. You will be disturbed and sickened. These images are appearing throughout the Arab and muslim world and are likely to awaken a significant backlash against Israel.
Israel’s effort to justify the invasion of Gaza because Hamas is firing rockets into Israel is getting little traction outside of Israel and the United States. The major problem is that after more than 10,000 rockets only 32 Israelis have died. So far, after a two week offensive in Gaza, more than 275 children are dead. Those children did not fire a single rocket at Israel. But they are dead nonetheless.
The toll on the children remains abstract until you see images like these:
After almost two weeks of combat Hamas is still firing missiles into Israel. It is a reminder that Israel’s ability to “solve” this threat thru force is highly questionable. Israel has few good options going forward. If it stops its offensive now it concedes a symbolic victory to Hamas, which will argue it withstood the Israeli onslaught and is still able to fire back. However, if it pursues the campaign against Hamas the IDF must venture farther into the densely populated cities of Gaza. That means more civilian deaths and the deaths of more children.
It matters little whether or not Israel intended to kill children. It is being perceived internationally as a deliberate policy of extermination.
There is an ultimate irony here. Supporters of Israel vow to never forget the Holocaust–the murder of more than six million Jews by the Nazis. Implicit in the vow to never forget is a belief that the failure of the European Jews to retaliate against the anti-semitic laws and defend themselves contributed to their annihilation. Israel, it is argued, cannot afford to take any risk of believing that those who attack Jews can be accorded any quarter or benefit of the doubt. It is a fight for survival and in such fights anything goes. But now Israel finds itself making the case that it must kill children to save children.
Yet when does it become okay to kill children? That question will haunt any nation carrying out a military assault on an urban center. The United States was able to incinerate tens of thousands of children in Hirsohima and Nagasaki without too much recrimination because the nuclear bombs brought a quick end to a war that might have produced even more civilian casualties.
Israel is at a political disadvantage. The Gazans inhabit a type of ghetto. Israel and Egypt control, for the most part, the flow of food and other goods into Gaza. Hamas portrays itself as freedom fighters for the Palestinians. Ironically, before the Israelis invaded, a case could be made that Hamas did not enjoy widespread support. But their fight against seemingly overwhelming odds resonates among not only Palestinians, but muslims worldwide, as an Islamic version of Masada. Jews continue to celebrate the fight to the death of a small band of Jewish defenders surrounded by the Roman Army. The Jews lost at Masada. Do Jews today consider that a defeat?
Masada today is one of the Jewish people’s greatest symbols. Israeli soldiers take an oath there: “Masada shall not fall again.” Next to Jerusalem, it is the most popular destination of Jewish tourists visiting Israel. As a rabbi, I have even had occasion to conduct five Bar and Bat Mitzvah services there. It is strange that a place known only because 960 Jews committed suicide there in the first century C.E. should become a modern symbol of Jewish survival.
That’s my point. A devastating loss to a superior military force did not become a source of shame for Jews. It is a point of pride. I believe that the images above are likely to stiffen Palestinian will to resist, not weaken it. The fight for Gaza may be the Palestinians version of Masada. And I don’t see how that is in Israel’s interest.

























