Thanks to the critics
It is time to thank the critics for forcing the IDF to examine itself and amend its procedures.
Haaretz EditorialIsrael's third report in response to the Goldstone report, which was submitted to the United Nations last week, consists of changes and updates in the Israel Defense Forces' standing orders following Operation Cast Lead.
The army will restrict the use of white phosphorous bombs in the future, appoint officers for "humanitarian" issues to accompany every battalion and update its directives on protecting civilians and their property during warfare.
After questioning 500 officers, examining 150 complaints and the Military Police's 47 investigations that generated a number of indictments - including one for manslaughter and one for using a child as a human shield - the IDF's investigation of itself is almost over.
At first the IDF insisted that everything in the operation had been in order, that white phosphorus or human shields had not been used illegally, that no civilians were killed for no reason and there was no unnecessary destruction. Now the army has been forced to renege and open investigations it would not have conducted had it not been for the Goldstone report, human rights groups' reports and coverage in the Israeli and international media.
Now, when it turns out the censure of Israel had plenty of truth in it, it is time to thank the critics for forcing the IDF to examine itself and amend its procedures. Even if not all of Richard Goldstone's 32 charges were solid and valid, some of them certainly were.
It is regrettable that so much time had to be wasted on false denials. It is also doubtful whether it is proper for the IDF to investigate itself.
Hence, after the public incitement campaign (some of it conducted by the IDF Spokesman's Office ) against the critics and whistle-blowers, the IDF would do well to recant and admit that the censure helped it redraft the ethics code by which it will act from now on. Better late (and little ) than never. The senior command must also come out now against the complaints recently made by officers for being investigated. These investigations are also part of the reason for the IDF's possibly changed conduct in the next war.
The IDF's belated inquiries and the willingness to change its directives hold an important lesson for the political leadership as well. It is better to display openness and cooperate with international committees than to boycott them and then accept some of their demands under pressure.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak should consider this lesson in their response to the international investigations into the Turkish flotilla affair.
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IF ANYONE BELIEVES ANY INVESTIGATION BY ISRAEL IS AT ARMS LENGTH, TRUTHFULL AND TRANSPARENT, THEN YOU HAVE TO GO TO LAST WEEKS COMMENTS BY ISRAEL SAYING " WE OPPOSE UNITED NATIONS INVESTIGATION OF THE FLOTILLA INCIDENT AND WILL NOT ASSIST THE UN". HOWEVER, THE SURFACE OF THE ICE HAS CRACKED FOR ISRAEL, THERE IS NO TURNING BACK. ISRAEL'S IMAGE HAS BEEN DAMAGED BEYOND REPAIR. DENY IT ALL YOU LIKE. MY ADVICE TO NETANYAHU IS, INSTEAD OF DENYING ALL THE CRIMINALITY IN ISRAEL, START THINKING AFRESH, THAT IS BE A MODEL STATE BY BEING ORDERLY, CONSTRUCTIVE, TRUTHFUL, BELIEVE IN GOD.
Bedouin tribes seem to have been massing in the desert over the past zillion years and it seems likely they are getting ready to threaten Israel's supply of unpopulated desert. Oh Israel has solved the problem, never mind. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10777040
All you care is about IDF public relations - and you too enjoy the fruits of having a strong army. Do you think that Goldstone and Hamas supporters will let you go free of charge just because of some embellishments in the IDF? Do you think that the ones who accused us while we were leaving Gaza, will let you off the hook? Do you think that if the IDF will fail, and Hamas will take an Israeli town and kill them all, the "peace activist" will do something else than cheer? The background for all the accusations against the IDF is not a single phosphorus or command decision, it is based on the claim any action by the IDF is wrong. Because Jews should not live in israel, at all according to the "peace activists". So long as you claim rights for Jews to live in Tel-Aviv (not the West Bank), you are acting as occupiers in their view. The truth is you pay taxes here, and you know much of these go to fund the IDF lethal combat force. If you remain here, you need - and implicitly use - a strong IDF to defend you, because no Palestinian wants you in Israel anywhere. So if you want to convince someone about your sincerity, give back your I.D. cards and citizenship, and join Chomsky or Finkelstein abroad. Talking cheap moralities, makes you look worse than these two - at least they do not betray their own words.
Israeli I read your frustrations re the articles and posters who dwell withing Haaretz walls it poses as a Israeli "Intellectual" think tank I find it just the opposite in the guise of critical cynism against Israel the Country that pays their salaries and employes their children they are actually the ones who encourage the hate festivals against themselves calling themselves Progressives of the beit shimoosh
the internationalist haaretz is incapable of having any strategic thinking. if there is a war with lebanon or iran or syria, how do they think israel can win those wars? or do they not care? do they not realise that the more the idf is forced to follow rules of engagement cooked up by so-called international jurists who answer to no one, the more israel will be endangered? i am not advocating for the commission of war crimes, i.e., the wanton and intentional killing of civilians for no reason. however, the iidf must be allowed to use common sense. we are also all waiting for haaretz to admit that innumerable war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed by muslim countries for no reason other than their criminal aim to terrorise civilians and to subjugate them, including in western nations.
The IDF had no problem with allowing the publication of dramatic pictures showing White Phosphorus shells being used extensively during Cast Lead. They were on the cover of every Israeli newspaper. They lead in almost every online-edition. For some reason any observation based upon those photos was censored. We KNOW from his commentary that Mr. Bradley Burston was trained to treat WP wounds, and he must have known what the air-bursts in the photos were. The Sgt Shultz "I see, nothing, I know nothing' approach was not a characteristic of Israel 50, or even 30 years ago. The IDF was the world's most moral army because Israeli's wanted it to be the most moral army in the world. It is an army of the people, and it has changed with the nation. The IDF/Government of Israel is being slowly forced by facts to admit what it has lied about, but still refuses to admit it lied. It knew it was lying. It censored the truth, but not the photos. It still lies to cover those lies. Why bother? The evidence was there, on the front pages of every Israeli newspaper - in photos approved by the IDF - from the very beginning. The answer is that like Sgt. Schultz, too many Israeli's didn't want to see what they were/are seeing.
" The answer is that like Sgt. Schultz, too many Israeli's didn't want to see what they were/are seeing. " (by Mark L.). Since 2002, 3, 4, and 5, hundreds of suicide deaths of civilians women and children in busses, restaurants, etc, that you Mr. Lincoln, Mahmood perhaps, will never care about to know it existed. Why? Only 5 years ago.... and your Godam memory has a black hole in your head about that....
G-d bless the victims of those terrorist attacks, but when was the last time a terrorist attack happened? There will never be peace until we learn to forgive, on both sides.
(a) The "phenomenon" described here (categoric denial, followed by checking out what was first flatly denied) is NOT limited to the IDF--or to Israel. (b) It is to the IDF's CREDIT that they did it (even if they were arguably forced by critics to do so).
The problem is, most of it is not criticism, but invective from people who want to see Israel and its people destroyed.
There used to be much more criticism from within Israel. The First Lebanon War was examined, criticized in detail by Israelis for example. The Israeli response to the Lavon Affair was intense. The degree to which such things were revealed and debated contributed immensely to the nation's success and growth. Once upon a time, it was inconceivable that a failure such as the Second Lebanon War would be followed by another war based upon the same self-defeating strategic concepts. Yet in an Israel where the kind of self-criticism once open debate had been reduced to a formal exercise such as the Winograd Commission, the errors were soon repeated with highly negative effects upon the nation.
Just yesterday Barak threatened to commit the same crimes in Lebanon
The editorial is premised on the false notion that the IDF would not have investigated alleged war crimes--most of which have been determined to be unfounded and certainly overblown--but for the one-sided and biased assaults on the right of Israel to defend itself. That is spin, and that is untrue. Israelis should be proud of the extent to which the IDF has always investigated allegations of wrongdoing.
What? You mean to say that Goldstone is no longer a self-hating Jew and his associates no longer rabid anti-Semites? I am now beginning to worry about the Turkish "flotilla". Will you soon be saying that the passengers were not real terrorists and that Erdogan had reason to be angry with Israel because of the treatment of the Gazans? You can't just leave us dangling in the wind! Stick to your guns and we will keep saying Amen.
The IDF is the same as it was before. The difference is that they will learn better how to mask their immoral acts. As before, they consider their worst enemy to be photographers and journalists. As before they will mete out deadly force to those weilding a camera. Justice is supported by trasparancy. The IDF is anything but transparent.
Military procedures come second to that. A military that is roped in to support defective goals will never genuinely amend its procedures. The defective goal the IDF is supporting is protracted procrastination with, at the end of it, world amnesia that will allow demographic interests to dictate the next step.
As For Me, Well Turkey (and Egypt come to that) are now off my list of holiday destinations. Similarly anything produced by Turkey or Egypt or "Palestine" or Jordan or Syria or Lebanon. Lack of finance may be persuasive but then again the dhimmi west will give them more of my money as "aid" which in truth will be "jizzya" which, in 60 years, has financed an increase of population in Gaza from 250000 to 1.5M? Oppressed? I should coco. Hey THEY drive around in the latest 4x4s which I cannot afford!!! Oppressed and destitute? Give me some of that. Be grateful to IDF and quit bashing the people who protect and serve you and our country ISRAEL
Ya im sure all Gazans drive around in 4 X 4s. And im sure you would trade your life with a Gazan, right?
The flotilla is VERY different from Goldstone. There are the videos !!! Showing clearly that the Turkish terrorists were the culprit. Unless they were forged, falsified, which is the main contention of anti-Israelis herein. Therefore I am surprised that Ha'aretz writes about everything under the sky, mainly politics, except anything related to FACTS which appear abundant here. Unless the videos were falsified indeed. Could that be? There were so many people there....Ha'aretz, please don't delete that. I am asking a question....
The fact is that for you israelis is normal to kill everybody resists to you, throwing stones in west bank or using butts and chains in international waters. Videos, real o fake, show exactly that: no activist makes use of firearms, wounded IDF are treated by paramedics too. Nonetheless there are 9 dead. One at least, as a video shows, deliberately killed while already in custody.
..the once friend has become a TERRORIST when things are going as israel wishes? wow! there's one terrorist here, and this are not the turkish one....
The video to which you refer is a small section of what must be a much longer video taken by the IDF. Why not show the action earlier, leading up to the commando assault? Why not show some of the many videos in the cameras captured from the Flotilla passengers? I imagine that the IDF is still editing all that footage into a film which will be good PR for them. Will they ever give back the raw footage? BTW, passengers who resist an illegal assault in international waters are NOT terrorists.
Attack, who ever does that, against military personnel, is never "terrorism".
.... circulating in emails. One of them was quite telling of what you people call "one deliberately killed while already in custody." - a dark video on which NOTHING can be seen but some voice talking and one can hear shots. So, ONLY sound.... As to BDS, who "can imagine that the IDF is still editing....etc" I know how you "imagine" things which next become suddenly "facts". Anyway, all those "imagined" things were already seen by (2?) commissions already, and will perhaps be seen again in the future, but NOT by UNCHR. Fact is that our soldiers got the mother of all beatings, and did shoot in self defense in a horrible situation, which is quite understandable. AND, considering what goes on in the world, 100,000 killed here, 300,000 there, etc, the fight on this ship, sent to make trouble, resulting in beatings and 10 deaths, a millimeter in comparison, and receiving such incredible attention and opprobrium, shows only how difficult Israel's defense has become. As the Turks say, holding a stick with shit at both ends...
i disagree, attacks on domestic secruity services is terrorism too. ie, the Fort Hood shootings
War is not a stroll in the park, it's a terrible experience for all involved. All things that happened in operation cast lead has to be analyzed both positive and negative incidents. That IDF is doing this shows that it is't rigid organization and it is improving.
You mentioned a number of indicments including one for manslaughter and one for using a child as a human shield. How many similar situations like these go on in battles and wars by other countries over the last 20 years or so yet we hear nothing. These things have happened and will continue to happen in war regardless of which country is involved. However, because this is Israel, it must be singled out and ridiculed. I will have no problem with all this international pressure on Israel as soon as these international agencies (large arab membership) start applying the same pressure on other countries.
Just look at the media reporting on the behavior of the American army and their allies in Afghanistan and Irak since 2003. Yet recently, Wikileaks has released extremely embarrassing report for the US leadership, that were relayed by worldwide media. Basically, one expects armies from democratic countries to behave in a better way than armies from undemocratic regimes or past monarchies. Moreover, Israel has a claim to higher morality that evidently puts it under sharper light when it can't match these standards. Especially, when it acts as the agressor, as it is the case in the contexte of the operation Cast Lead in Gaza.
And should immediately appoint a commission to examine its failures.
and what - if anything - will really come from it? Convictions to be overturned? Subsequent promotions and reimbursement of lawyers fees? And who, if anyone, is going to enforce these new guidelines? There were guidelines already in effect that were broken - with an apparent nod - or more - by the chain of command. All the military codes of conduct rules in the world won't do any good until they're made an integral part of a soldier's training and - most importantly - STRICTLY ENFORCED WITHOUT EXCEPTION! Israel and the IDF fail miserably - or is it actually refuse? - in that regard. After 60-plus years, the implied logic behind this is that they won't punish a Jewish soldier for harming or killing an Palestinian/Arab...and as long as that mentality exists - no amount of "new" guidelines is going to change anything. Watch and see what comes of these "indictments" when all is said and done.
Were the changes simply intended to defuse foreign criticism, there would not be the gradual, ever more damning, exposition drip, by drip.