Tallying the Total War

Aftermath: Tallying the Total War
by C. L. Cook
Though still in early days following the mayhem, some preliminary numbers are coming down the main media pipe regarding the toll of Israel's 'Operation Cast Lead,' (that Uber carnage recently featured on the world's front pages) campaign prosecuted against the captive denizens of the Gaza Strip.

The dead already exceeds 1300, even as buildings still smolder and few of the thousands of erstwhile apartment buildings and houses now rubble fields strewn throughout Gaza has been fully excavated.

More than five thousand bear physical wounds; more than a hundred thousand are homeless; more than a third of the victims children; and that's just the beginning.



Jonathan Cook reports:

"The military sidestepped the problem by widening its definition of Hamas-affiliated buildings. Or as one senior official explained: “There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel.”

That included mosques, universities, most government buildings, the courts, 25 schools, 20 ambulances and several hospitals, as well as bridges, roads, 10 electricity generating stations, sewage lines, and 1,500 factories, workshops and shops.

Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah estimate the damage so far at $1.9 billion, pointing out that at least 21,000 residential apartment buildings need repairing or rebuilding, forcing 100,000 Palestinians into refugeedom once again. In addition, 80 per cent of all agricultural infrastructure and crops were destroyed. The PA has described its estimate as “conservative”."
http://www.thenational.ae/





After witnessing the targeting and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure in the Yugoslavia (FRY), then replayed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Lebanon, Israel's dismissal of its methodical destruction of Gaza's infrastructure as "collateral" is an insult. An insult almost as humiliating as outgoing Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's photo op with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. In that moment for the ages, a smiling Olmert reaches across the table to shake Moon's hand, while fixing him with an unblinking stare, and saying the destruction of the U.N. food and medicine warehouse compound with multiple white phosphorus shells just hours before was "an accident."

Inside Gaza yesterday, Donald MacIntyre of The Independent describes a flabbergasted Secretary General, reportedly "outraged" by the destruction of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) compound, saying:


"I have seen only a fraction of the destruction...[t]his is shocking and alarming. These are heartbreaking scenes I have seen and I am deeply grieved by what I have seen today."





MacIntyre says Mr. Ban is demanding an investigation into what he calls Israel's "outrageous" attacks against the UN compound and two UN schools, one of which killing 40 sheltering civilians.

For its part, Israel today (Jan. 21, 2009) said it has lauched an investigation of its own into the army's use of white phosphorus, something they denied doing throughout the three weeks of 'Cast Lead.'

Investigation not withstanding, what will likely not come up in either the United Nations' or Israel's probes is the strategy behind this latest outrage. Jonathan Cook quotes Israel's chief of staff during the destruction of Lebanon in 2006, Dan Halutz as he describes the tactics behind the "Dahiya Doctrine," named for a suburb of Beirut blasted flat then:


"[We will] turn back the clock 20 years."



This turning back of clock hands has been, Cook argues, Israel's tacit plan from the start. Destroy Gaza's infrastructure and economy, setting back any efforts to establish a stable and autonomous "state," (let alone a prosperous one) leaving Hamas to bear the blame for the wretched conditions Israel has created. This madness behind Israel's methods remains unspoken for good reason: Targeting civilians is a war crime. It is, next to waging agressive war, THE war crime of war crimes.


Ben White, writing for the Guardian goes Cook one further, saying Israel purposefully created the "humanitarian crisis." He reminds of Israel's actions in the months preceding the end of the cease fire with facts forgotten in most "mainstream" reportage while the bombs were falling. According to White:
"Israel broke the ceasefire on 4 November, with an attack in the Gaza Strip that killed six Hamas members, and the following day severely tightened its siege of the territory. Imports were reduced to 16 trucks a day, down from 123 daily just the previous month (and 475 in May 2007). Following the unsurprising surge in Palestinian attacks, Israeli officials claimed that an all-out war was unavoidable; without mentioning that an operation had been planned for some months already.

Meanwhile, tales of the brutal, callous, and criminal behaviour on not only Israel's leadership, but its soldiery are too now coming out. Like the case of Khaled Abed Rabbo, related by the aforementioned Donald MacIntyre of The Independent and titled, 'Gaza: 'I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls.'

In that article, Khaled watched his daughters, aged two and seven years old gunned down in cold blood by a lunching tank crewman. Khaled was moving his family out of their Gaza City home as directed by the soldiers when this individual murdered the kids. Khaled's third daughter survived long enough to be taken to a hospital for critical spinal trauma treatment.

That the atrocities mentioned here all occurred during George W. Bush's watch, before the other "day that changed everything," matters little. President Obama will be hearing plenty from his colleagues around the globe concerning the outrage over both Israel's recent crime, and its long-time scofflaw pattern of impunity, being expressed on their respective streets.

Though Obama said next to nothing during the three weeks of 'Operation Cast Lead,' he now has some serious questions to answer about Israel's actions, and those of its number one supporter in arms and alms, the United States of America.