There's No Way to 'Explain' This War Away - Opinion - Haaretz.com
Facing unpleasant facts, we often defend ourselves by denying reality. Here's an unpleasant fact: The children of Gaza have no defenses whatsoever. To date, a large number of their small bodies have accumulated in the Gaza Strip: more than 16,000 children.
Hence, denial: The numbers shouldn't be trusted, we say, as these are figures of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza – Hamas figures. Fine. So let's assume that the figures were, say, doubled. In that case, we have killed "only" 8,000 children. Now do we feel better about ourselves?
Not as good as we would have felt if the defense minister had only allowed Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi to appear at the recent Israel Bar Association conference. Indeed, the minister's denial of the military advocate general's annual speech before Israel's legal community made outraged headlines – so let's dig into the outrage.
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If the public had only had the privilege of listening to what Tomer-Yerushalmi had to say, we would have surely understood that all those children were killed legally. Even the children from that family that was burned to death, or the other one, or the other one. We would have understood, and felt even better about ourselves.
But instead of allowing her to diligently explain it all away, the defense minister opted to "undermine her autonomy" and now all the hasbara and law geniuses are rushing forward and volunteering to provide the government PR advice, free of charge.
Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz at the annual Memorial Day ceremony in Jerusalem, earlier this year.Credit: Naama Grynbaum
And they're shouting angrily that the minister doesn't understand, and that it would have been better to allow the military advocate general to explain, because then the nudniks in The Hague, Brussels and Paris would believe Tomer-Yerushalmi.
That is, they would believe us that all those thousands of children – however many there were, who can count them anyway? – were blown up, or incinerated, or buried under ruins of some building (are there still any buildings left standing in the Gaza Strip?) proportionately and in accordance with all statutes of International Humanitarian Law.
Military Advocate General, MG Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi at the bar association conference, last year.Credit: Rami Shllush
Indeed, if they had just allowed her, the military advocate general would have explained it all so well. I know this because at last year's Bar Association conference, she explained it ever so marvelously!
Of course at the time there were several thousand fewer small corpses to explain, but still, even then it was already a challenge. No amateur has ever explained away the corpse of a small child, to paraphrase our national poet Haim Nahman Bialik. And the explanations by our lawyers are definitely not amateurish: They are of an elite genre.
Relatives of a Palestinian child, Massa Abed, 4, who was killed in an Israeli army airstrike on the Gaza Strip, carry her body at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, in April.Credit: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
In her speech a year ago, Tomer-Yerushalmi spoke about "the purity of our arms" (Good!) and explained that "the IDF acts tirelessly to limit the harm to the civilian population" (even better!) and she added that "the claim that Israel is implementing an intentional policy of starvation, at a time when the IDF is making tremendous efforts to ensure entry of food, medicine and humanitarian equipment into the Gaza Strip is absurd" (fingerlickin' good!) and even coddled us with "this war is extraordinary, also in that it is the most legal war we have known." I listened to all these explanations, and I understood, and felt good about it.
A thought crept into my mind: The explanations a year ago were indeed wonderful, for sure. But nevertheless, so many more thousands of children have died since then, and that is kind of unpleasant.
Indeed as MK Tzvi Succot said, "It's possible to kill 100 Gazans in one night and that doesn't interest anyone." Yet as comforting as his words were, another disruptive thought crept into my heart: To whom should we be thankful that it's possible to kill 100 Gazans in a single night – though sometimes very small Gazans – and that doesn't interest anyone?
Palestinian children line up to fill their containers with water in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City in the central Gaza Strip, last month.Credit: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP
Here is what should be of interest: Stopping the war. If we don't stop the war, tonight we will kill another "100 Gazans." And tomorrow night, and the next night and one after that.
To stop the war, the world must see through the obfuscations of hasbara – and we should cut through the layers of denial. We should face the facts for what they are. Because this is not a war, this is slaughter with ethnic cleansing aspirations.
There is no way to "explain" this away, no matter how much the military advocate general or the attorney general or the justices of the High Court speechify in legalese.
Is it really necessary to read about how the army is examining "incidents in which there are claims about damage to shelters for displaced persons" to understand that all this is a smokescreen that aims to deny, to stupefy and to procrastinate, so that we will be able to spend another night slaughtering children and wake up in the morning still somehow able to look at ourselves in the mirror – and most importantly without international sanctions?
MK Tzvi Succot speaking at the Knesset.Credit: Sraya Diamant
Seize the podium, Defense Minister Israel Katz. Grab the microphone, MK Tzvi Succot.
You are speakers of truth. Thanks to you and your colleagues, there's a chance of popping the bubble of self-righteous denial, as if Israel were a law-abiding state, as if the heads of its legal system were scrupulous about upholding international law, as if Bezalel Smotrich and Co. were wild extremists and Tomer-Yerusalmi & Co. were the "good guys." Both lots kill children. Every night. Blessed be the sanctions that will rescue 1,000 children from death, that will rescue 100 children, that will rescue 10, that will rescue one child.