Strong in numbers (Gideon Levy)

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Here we have the yardstick for security success: the number of Palestinians killed. As in the most primeval wars, the heads of the defense establishment are boasting about the number of people Israel has killed. Their job is to ensure protection for the residents of the state. And, as we know, the residents of the 'Gaza perimeter' are not receiving this protection. So the death toll has become the measure of their success.

Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin briefed the cabinet last week about the 'achievements' of his organization: 810 Palestinians killed during the past two years. His predecessor, Avi Dichter, once appeared before the editorial board of Haaretz and proudly presented a sophisticated slideshow from his laptop computer: a pie chart of Palestinian casualties, in several colors. Last week, the brigade commander in Gaza, Colonel Ron Ashrov, defined the operation in the Zeitun neighborhood as 'very successful.' Why? Because his troops killed 19 Palestinians in a single day and further inflamed the conflagration in the South. How depressing, morally and in practical terms, to think that this is the measure of success.

Has the daily mass killing in Gaza improved the security situation? No, it has only made it worse. Has it reduced the number of Qassams? No, it has led to their proliferation. So why are we killing? We need `to do something` and there needs to be `a price tag.` These are hollow cliches. A review of recent newspapers presents a clear picture: As long as the U.S. president was still in the country, Israel refrained from liquidations, and the number of Qassams decreased. When George Bush left, we resumed killing and, as a result, Sderot has faced the most difficult days it has ever known. The burning question that arises is: What are we killing for? Someone must answer this.

The distinction that Diskin and his ilk make between 'armed' and 'unarmed' Palestinians also does not change a thing. Whether 600 armed men were killed (the number cited by the Shin Bet director) or only 455 (according to Haaretz`s calculation), this does not justify the scope of the killing or serve as an indication of its effectiveness. Not every armed person deserves to die. All of the killings, of armed and unarmed, have only led to an escalation of the violence on the other side. For every 'senior Jihad commander,' for every Qassam launcher killed, seven others immediately emerge. The killing is useless, and the defense establishment boasts about it only to satisfy public opinion."

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[kayecy]

1. Is it just the Israeli military that still believes ........

Is it just the Israeli military that still believes that 'body count' is a measure of the progress to achieving peace?

The US, tried it for years before eventually getting round to appointing Gates/Petraeus to run their war. Petraeus broke all military doctrine by stating the US had not gone to war to kill militants but to achieve a peaceful regime.

Stimulating seven Iraqis to become militants by killing one was simply boosting the enemy's forces.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

2. Great blogpost by Bernard Avishai on the same subject.

http://bernardavishai.blogspot.com/

[kayecy]

4. Many thanks for the URL - You would have to be pretty hard-hearted to be cynical ...n/t

[LeftishBrit]

5. A very interesting blog

and I note that it links to some other good blogs, e.g. those of Leonard Fein, Leila Abu-Saba and Daniel Levy.

There is one small point in the article that is very relevant, and often not recognized by people who don't follow Israeli politics:

'Our real problem is that we don’t have a prime minister who can govern,” an old friend of mine told me, a professor in a teacher’s college in Shderot, who runs with her students to the shelters every day”; “We’ve had one prime minister after another, who has been a hostage to right wing parties and their vision'

This is one of the downsides of a strict proportional-representation system: governments very rarely have absolute majorities, and almost always have to include small parties in order to survive. When these are moderate parties, it can be a good thing and stop a Prime Minister being too powerful; but often the small parties that hold the balance of power in Israel are either very RW ones like Lieberman's, or religious parties, or both.

[bemildred]

3. "The beatings will continue until morale improves." nt