Civilian Toll in Gaza Finally Gets Major 'NYT' Play

By: Greg Mitchell (Commentary) It took almost a week, but The New York Time finally weighed in today with a front-page report on the civilian carnage in Gaza under six days of Israeli bombing. It?s only day one of 2009 but it will be hard to top the headline for its sure Duh-ness: ?In Dense Gaza, Civilians Suffer.?

Earlier in the week the paper carried an editorial backing the attacks (though warning not to invade) along with a double-length op-ed doing the same. Not a single Times columnist has spoken out about the assaults.

Even today?s story spends half of its opening paragraphs offering reasons why the bombing had to happen and why the civilian casualty toll has not been higher due to allegedly careful Israeli targeting.

The Times article quotes United Nations officials testifying to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and states flatly that the Israelis recognize it. Funny, then, to see the top current story at the site of the Jerusalem daily Haaretz today, revealing that Israel?s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, on a visit to Paris, reiterated her government's rejection of a French-proposed cease-fire in the Gaza Strip ? explaining, "There is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.?

Today?s editorial in Haaretz is headed, ?Time for Diplomacy.? The site, however, carries a story on the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) chiefs calling for a major (if brief) invasion, which a poll finds only 20% or Israelis backing after the disastrous invasion of Lebanon (which the U.S. media also supported strongly).

The Haaretz editorial declares, "As became evident in the Iraq and second Lebanon wars, air forces cannot subdue armed militias terrorizing or supported by civilian populations. It is likely that a massive ground operation deep into the Gaza Strip would hit more Hamas installations and further reduce the rocket and missile fire, which has made the lives of Israelis in the south a nightmare. However, as long as the sides have not agreed on long-term arrangements to restore calm, it appears that only reconquering Gaza and a long stay there will ensure some sort of security for people in the south.

"But that means a lengthy conflict with the local terror organizations and could lead to heavy losses of troops in the Israel Defense Forces. Furthermore, lacking any other sovereign entity, Israel will have to take responsibility for the welfare of one and half million Palestinians. This means back to the old days of military rule."

Since the U.S. media, as usual, has been so one-sided in its coverage and editorializing, we have been publishing excerpts from some counter views by well-known Israeli columnists at Haaretz. Here is one more example, from Gideon Levy. Another column at Haaretz hits allegedly "Israel-hating Israelis."
*

Our finest young men are attacking Gaza now. Good boys from good homes are doing bad things. Most of them are eloquent, impressive, self-confident, often even highly principled in their own eyes, and on Black Saturday dozens of them set out to bomb some of the targets in our "target bank" for the Gaza Strip.

They set out to bomb the graduation ceremony for young police officers who had found that rare Gaza commodity, a job, massacring them by the dozen. They bombed a mosque, killing five sisters of the Balousha family, the youngest of whom was 4. They bombed a police station, hitting a doctor nearby; she lies in a vegetative state in Shifa Hospital, which is bursting with wounded and dead. They bombed a university that we in Israel call the Palestinian Rafael, the equivalent of Israel's weapons developer, and destroyed student dormitories. They dropped hundreds of bombs out of blue skies free of all resistance.

In four days they killed 375 people. They did not, and could not, distinguish between a Hamas official and his children, between a traffic cop and a Qassam launch operator, between a weapons cache and a health clinic, between the first and second floors of a densely populated apartment building with dozens of children inside. According to reports, about half of the people killed were innocent civilians. We're not complaining about the pilots' accuracy, it cannot be otherwise when the weapon is a plane and the objective is a tiny, crowded strip of land. Our excellent pilots are effectively bullies now. As in training flights, they bomb undisturbed, facing neither an air force nor defense system?

It was not the pilots who decided to go to war, but they are the subcontractors. The real accounting must be with the decision makers, but the pilots are their partners. When they return home they will be welcomed with all the respect and honor we reserve for them. It appears that not only will no one try to provoke moral questioning among them, but that they are considered the real heroes of this cursed war. The Israel Defense Forces spokesman is already going over the top with praise in his daily briefings for the "wonderful work" they are doing. He too, of course, completely ignores the images from Gaza. After all, these are not sadistic Border Police officers beating up Arabs in the alleys of Nablus and the center of Hebron, or cruel undercover soldiers who shoot their targets point-blank in cold blood. These, as we have said, are our finest young men.

Maybe if they were to confront the results of their "wonderful work" even once they would regret their decisions, they would reconsider the effects of their actions. If they were to go just once to Jerusalem's Alyn Hospital Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Center, where for nearly three years Marya Aman, 7, has been hospitalized - she is a quadriplegic who runs her wheelchair, and her life, with her chin - they would be shocked. This adorable little girl was hit by a missile in Gaza that killed almost her entire family, the handiwork of our pilots.

But all of this is well hidden from the pilots' eyes. They are only doing their job, as the saying goes, only following orders like bombing machines. In the past few days they have excelled at this, and the results are there for the entire world to see. Gaza is licking its wounds, just like Lebanon before it, and almost no one pauses for a moment to ask whether all this is necessary, or unavoidable, or whether it contributes to Israel's security and moral image. Is it really the case that our pilots return safely to base, or are they in fact returning to them as callous, cruel and blind people?