Written on Jan. 12, 2009
The numbers are lopsided. In two weeks of fighting, Israel has suffered 13 dead, of whom three were civilians felled by Qassam rockets launched by Hamas into cities in southern Israel, while ten were soldiers killed in action in Israel’s incursion into the Gaza strip.
On the other hand, as a result of Israeli retaliatory missile attacks by helicopter gunships and shellfire from Merkeva tanks, more than 850 Palestinians have been killed, of whom one fourth, one third or one half – depending on who is counting - are innocent women and children.
Because of the lopsided fatalities count, comparisons are being made between Gaza in 2009 and the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943.
By 1942, most of the Jews in Poland had been herded by the German Nazis into ghettoes, the biggest of which was the Warsaw Ghetto which was densely packed with 300,000 to 400,000 Jews. Of these, an estimated 300,000 were eventually shipped to the Treblinka extermination camp. Some one thousand of those who were left behind, armed with nothing more than pistols and revolvers, chose to stage an uprising against the Nazis, the biggest single Jewish uprising during the war.
The Nazi reaction was swift and systematic. Two thousand Waffen-SS troops surrounded the ghetto in April 1943 and, in less than 30 days, methodically swept through the enclave, especially through its sewer network, and quashed the uprising. Some 13,000 Jews, mostly unarmed civilians, were killed.
Is Gaza the Israelis’ Warsaw Ghetto in reverse? Yes and No.
The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rose in revolt against being sent to the Treblinka extermination camp. They were purely in survival mode. They did not daringly lob grenades at the Nazis outside the ghetto walls. They had no ambitions to throw the Nazi Germans to the sea, nor did they have any dreams of forming a separate state.
By contrast, the Palestinians in Gaza, under the leadership of the Hamas militants whom they had elected two years ago to be their government, want to form a Palestinian state on the entire territory occupied by the Israelis, whom they have solemnly vowed to throw into the Mediterranean Sea. A goal that it shares with its main supporters, the Iran of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs.
Not all Palestinians share the passion of Hamas. The Fatah organization, founded by the late Yassir Arafat, have arrived at a modus vivendi with the Jewish state and have accepted the existence of Israel as a fact of life. But in their civil war two years ago, the Fatah was driven out of Gaza by Hamas, which regards them as collaborators. Fatah’s writ is confined to the West Bank.
To accentuate its uncompromising attitude towards Israel and the hated Jews, Hamas has been launching Qassam rockets everyday into southern Israel for the past three weeks. More than 500, at the latest count, even after Israeli Merkeva tanks invaded parts of northern Gaza. For sheer chutzpah - ironically a Hebrew word - Hamas takes the cake.
But are they realistic? Did Hamas really think they could fire 500 rockets into Israel without drawing retaliation from the Israelis?. Or, more likely, did Hamas expect Israeli retaliation but are cynically using their own people as baits to draw that retaliation so as to score points with world public opinion, especially with the liberals who will soon be in power in Washington DC.
The question has to be asked because the main reason for the lopsided fatalities count is the total lack of preparations for war on the part of Hamas.
As far as I can tell, Gazan towns and cities do not have air raid sirens and air-raid shelters.(Israeli towns and cities do) Their hospitals did not stock up on medicines and fuel for generators and promptly ran out of both. Their food, fuel and water sources were apparently not prepared for war. Add to this the fact that Gaza is densely populated. Throw a stone in any direction and chances are that stone will hit someone.
Given these conditions, it is hard to understand the motivation of Hamas for starting a war situation that they know they cannot win. It seems more and more like a deliberate ploy to win some points with President-elect Barack Obama’s liberal government, even if it means unnecessary death and suffering for hundreds of thousands of their own people..
Liberal critics point to the lack of proportionality in the casualties: 859 dead Palestinians compared to 13 dead Israelis. But how should war be conducted? Should the superior side (Israel) count its casualties at the end of the day and exact more or less only that many casualties the next day on the other, weaker side (Hamas)? Would that have convinced Hamas to stop firing those rockets at Israeli cities? When was the last time liberals fought a war?
The Israelis claim that Hamas deliberately locate their arms depots and munitions factories under mosques, schools and hospitals, which made it necessary for them (the Israelis) to strike at these sites.
The Israelis also claim that they are close to achieving their objectives, whatever those may be. I can only guess that this involves sending infantry into the heart of Gaza City and capturing intact those mosques, schools and hospitals under which they claim Hamas has located arms depots and munitions factories, in order to show the media and the world why it was necessary to hit those sites..
The Israelis do not want a repeat of their stand-off with the Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. After being on the receiving end of some 4,000 Katyusha rockets and Iranian-built Fajr missiles fired by Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon, Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah as a military force in their 33-day war. The impasse forced the resignation of the Israeli minister of defense and the army chief-of-staff and pushed down the popularity rating of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to zero percent.
The Israelis apparently do not want that to happen again and will do their utmost to make sure that Hamas is destroyed as both a military and a political force, even if they are seen as revisiting the Warsaw Ghetto in reverse. Whether they will succeed or not remains to be seen. *****
Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in .www.tapatt.org and in abaya.blogspot.com.
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