In the past few years, I’ve often heard those in favor of Israeli concessions – even conservatives – make an argument that goes this way: if Israel unambiguously gives back X, and the Palestinians have clear control over X, then, when they do Y, and blow it, the world will see who’s really right.

The Fatwa Flotilla ought to put this argument to rest forever.  If ever there were a more clear-cut case of concessions yielding bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians, and the world siding with the killers, I can’t think of it.

By now, the mini-history is well-known.  Israel pulls out of Gaza, and what should have been useful infrastructure is reduced to rubble within hours by the grateful recipients.  Hamas stages a coup, and immediately begins rocketing southern Israel.  Israel finally has had enough, enters Gaza to rid itself of the menace, and leaves after a few weeks, largely timing the withdrawal in order not to present the new US President with a middle east mini-war on his first day in office.

But in order to keep military materiel out of Gaza, Israel imposes a completely legal blockade. It specifically permits food and medicine to enter – although there’s no real way of knowing how much of that is commandeered by Hamas to feed itself rather than its citizens who elected them in what, according to ex-Icon Jimmy Carter, were the freest and fairest elections he’s every seen.  (And he’d know, having seen some pre-1980 Georgia elections.)

It is a blockade designed to keep people alive, while preventing their ability to make war.  For those, like Peter Beinart, who find such a strategy morally objectionable, I would point them to Winston Churchill’s speech of August 20, 1940:

There is another aspect.  Many of the most valuable foods are essential to the manufacture of vital war material.  Fats are used to make explosives.  Potatoes make the alcohol for motor spirit.  The plastic materials now so largely used in the construction of aircraft are made of milk.  If the Germans use these commodities to help them to bomb our women and children, rather than to feed the populations who produce them, we may be sure that the imported foods would go the same way, directly or indirectly, or be employed to relive the enemy of the responsibilities he has to wantonly assumed.

That blockade included food and medicine, specifically because they could be used as war materiel.  Israel’s does not, but is there any doubt that construction and industrial materials could easily be converted to military uses?

The problem Beinart identified – American Jews choosing their liberalism over Zionism – is one he exemplifies.  It’s the failure of liberalism to maintain a moral compass equal to the task of defending western values and humane civilization in the face of barbarism.

At each stage, even as Israel has retreated into a more defensive positions, Hamas has become more aggressive.  This should surprise no student of human nature, but it also doesn’t seem to have won Israel any of the credit it was supposed to gain by imposing moral clarity on the situation.  Concessions, if useful, should be made in the context of the negotiating partner, not a preening peanut gallery.

So, after a full day of remembrance of victims of actual war, fake war breaks out, the weapons being these little plastic squeaky hammers and silly string.  Someone’s going to suggest Judah Maccabee for the former, which leaves one searching in vain for one of his brothers, “The String.”  Other than leaving cities full of empty cans of the stuff, and the fact that the songs are all sung right-to-left, the holiday would be pretty familiar to Americans.

While the holiday is celebrated full-throated, time and a couple of decades of lefty propaganda have taken their toll, and one senses that the steely-eyed willingness to do whatever it took to assert a rightful claim to an ancestral homeland has been somewhat eroded.  So rather than Hatikvah, which you can find all over the place, I’ll post HaPalmach, the anthem of one of the militias that fought first the British, and then the Arabs, to help secure the country in 1948:

This evening marks Israeli Memorial Day, or Yom HaZikaron.  It comes immediately before Israeli Independence Day, Yom HaAtzmaut, more about which tomorrow.  The two are essentially two sides of the same holiday, one of solemn remembrance of those who died to make the other possible.

I’ve only been in Israel once for those days, in 1996.  Israel under some bombardments from Katyushas in the north.  At that time, they couldn’t reach the Golan, so the hiking tour I had scheduled went on more or less as planned.  There would be periodic booms, the warm, friendly sound of outgoing artillery, and more sporadic booms with a little “crack” in them, the far less congenial sound of incoming.

At one point, the tour stopped at Castle Nimrod, a medieval fort on the Golan overlooking the whole of the Hula Valley.  (Formerly the Hula Swamp.)  It was a clear day, and we had a great view of Kiryat Shemona, Hezbollah’s prime target.  The residents were quite safe, underground or having fled, and I have to admit, the group spent as much time looking at the city for a rocket impact as looking at the castle.  I later confessed this to an Israeli friend of mine, who, realizing that I wasn’t actually firing the missiles, smiled and said something like, “Well, if it was going to hit anyway, you may as well see.”

The afternoon before Yom HaZikaron itself, I took the train down the coast from Haifa to Tel Aviv to stay with an American friend of mine and his girlfriend, now wife.  That evening, from their apartment, I heard a concert for the troops at the base in the middle of the city, in particular this song:

HaMilchama HaAchrona (Lyrics)

It’s the consummate Yom HaZikaron song, written just after the 1973 War, for which Israel bore the responsibility of unpreparedness, not of aggression or provocation, a father promising his daughter that this will be the Last War.  Of course, it was untrue in 1996, and is even more untrue now, making it all the more powerful as time passes.

The next day, I took the tourist train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  The tradition on Yom HaZikaron is for air raid sirens to sound, and for pretty much all activity to come to a stop.  People stop in their tracks on the sidewalks.  Cars pull over and the drivers get out and stand.  Highway traffic stops.  If you’re buying lunch and haven’t gotten your change yet, too bad, you’ll have to wait a minute.  In my case, the train stopped, and everyone stood in the aisle.

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Itamar Marcus, one of the founders of Palestinian Media Watch is touring the US courtesy of our friends at Stand With Us. I had a chance to sit down and talk with him this morning.

Some of you may remember the fake Mickey Mouse that Hamas was using to indoctrinate children. At the beginning of Part 2, Mr. Marcus takes up the tale of that TV show, and the way it’s still being used to create a visceral hatred of the Jews.

Although he didn’t mention the source, Mr. Marcus cited a recent survey showing a Palestinian preference for religion law over that made by their own legislature. Given the more religious drift in Palestinian society, that Hamas was more effective in social networking venues than Fatah, but PMW doesn’t walk back the cat from social networking sites, so Mr. Marcus was unable to confirm this suspicion. In fact, many of the messages that Palestinian children are now receiving cast the war against Israel and the Jews in explicitly religious terms.

In correcting my mistake that the PA had been using Saudi-funded schoolbooks, Mr. Marcus pointed out that their funding had come from the West, and their content was domestically-created. A couple of years ago, PMW unveiled a report on those schoolbooks, and then-Senator Clinton condemned those books as, “poison.” Now-Secretary of State Clinton, and the administration she serves, are undeterred by their dismay with the most recent schoolbooks. Apparently, we can’t let extremists derail the “peace” “process,” even when those extremists are our negotiating partners.

In Part 3, he discusses a troubling trend within Israeli Arabic media, brought to the fore in its coverage of Operation Cast Lead.

At the end of the interview, Mr. Marcus dissects how Palestinian libels against Israel gain traction, from their inception, through their embellishment and eventual entrance into mainstream dialog.

The sound on the YouTube video is a little tinny, but I’m working on getting a better version up soon.

The Goldstone Report, the UN’s attempt to indict Israel for defending itself, has failed on so many levels that only an organization as twisted as the UN could continue to hold it out as anything other than propaganda.  Right now, the PA sees more advantage in using it to attack Hamas, but that may not last much longer.  Daled Amos has done yeoman work comparing the report’s absolution of Hamas with contemporaneous news accounts to the contrary.  At the same time, Max Boot notes the report’s bizarre application of standards that would make national self-defense impossible for Israel were they actually followed.  Gerald Steinberg, in his laundry list of biases, both through active hostility and laziness worthy of the MSM, comes close the uncovering the problem:

Mr. Goldstone’s professional qualifications are anchored in international law, but if anything, this report highlights the absurdity of a vocabulary and framework that are anachronistic. Applying classical concepts and terms to terror and asymmetric urban warfare, in which the entire population is a massive human shield and hospitals are used as command headquarters, as in the case of Gaza, is ridiculous.

The report, according to Mr. Steinberg, fails because it is little more than a collection of category errors, applying what amount to civilian law-enforcement standards to a matter of national self-defense.  If the consequences of international law producing such a document weren’t so dire, the report would be deeply unserious.

For a serious look at the Operation Cast Lead, look to the serious people at Azure, a journal dedicated to revitalizing the intellectual life of religious Zionism.  It has published a detailed analysis of Israeli actions during the operation, according to Just War Theory.  Asa Kasher, the author of the article, co-founder of the Journal of Military Ethics, and a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University.  Kasher is not seeking to address every action by every soldier, but instead attempts to place the entire operation, its goals, means, and methods as laid out by the Israeli military, in a philosophical framework.  If the Goldstone report attempts to convict the operation by virtue of often-questionable specifics, Kasher makes the case for the overall justness of the war, and the values by which it was fought.

For the time being, then, we should focus on the first stage of investigation mentioned above and restrict ourselves to examining the moral, ethical, and legal requirements to which decisionmakers and participants in military actions are bound. These requirements predate and are not dependant on the specific facts of Operation Cast Lead. However, though we are not in a position to provide a comprehensive answer to all the questions raised about what took place in the Gaza Strip during January 2009, the data collected so far permits us to conclude that a significant part of the criticism directed at Israel and the IDF during and after the operation was, to say the least, based on flimsy evidence.

Just War Theory lays out eight principles forming the “basis of the standard moral discussion of war.”

• A state must have a compelling justification for taking military action against a state, entity, organization, or individuals outside its borders
• The use of military force is, therefore, justified only if all other alternatives have been exhausted. In just war theory, this is known as the principle of last resort
• The principle of right intention demands that a state not only wage war in a just cause, but that all of its intentions, on every level, be equally justifiable
• The probability of success principle prohibits taking military action—which inevitably involves death, suffering, and destruction—if it is certain to fail
• The principle of macro-proportionality: The positive results of the operation should be measured in terms of the protection it has provided to the state and its citizens at the conclusion of the military campaign and its aftermath. The negative results should be measured in terms of the death, suffering, and destruction inflicted on the other side
• The principle of micro-proportionality: in regards to specific military actions that endanger harmless enemy non-combatants
• The most important aspect of the relationship between a state and its citizens is the obligation of self-defense. This is one of the highest duties of a properly functioning democratic state
• The principle of distinction, one of the most important when fighting an enemy who both attacks your civilians and hides behind his own:

The principle of distinction presents the combatant with three different standards of conduct to guide him in any military action: (a) a standard he should follow when facing a group comprising enemy combatants and no one else; (b) a standard he should follow when facing a group of enemy non-combatants who are not participating in the fighting and are not in proximity to enemy combatants; (c) a standard he should follow when facing a mixed group of combatants and non-combatants.

Kasher then goes on to examine the Israeli decision to go to war, and its conduct therein, in light of these principles.  Read the whole thing.

If international law seems remote from these considerations, it is a failing of international law, not the ethical framework.  Paul Robinson, of the University of Pennsylvania, gets it right:

Because international law has no enforcement mechanism, it is almost wholly dependent upon moral authority to gain compliance.  Yet the repuration international law will increasingly earn from its rules on the use of defensive force is one of moral deafness.