“Palestinian medical sources say at least 1,300 Palestinians were killed, nearly a third of them children, and 5,500 injured during the conflict.” [ BBC ]

“Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been left homeless and 400,000 people still have no running water, it says.” “Electricity is available for less than 12 hours a day, and 100,000 people had been displaced….A total of 50 UN facilities and 21 medical facilities were damaged.”

“Separately, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said on Monday that 4,100 homes were totally destroyed and 17,000 others damaged during the conflict.

About 1,500 factories and workshops, 20 mosques, 31 security installations and 10 water or sewage pipes were also damaged, it added.

The bureau estimated that the overall physical damage so far amounted to about $1.9bn (£1.4bn), including about $200m (£140m) of damage to infrastructure.”

“The worst-hit areas in the Gaza Strip after Israel’s three-week offensive look as if they have been hit by a strong earthquake, aid agencies say.” [ BBC ]

Arms used

“The Israeli army used white phosphorus, a weapon with a highly incendiary effect, in densely populated civilian residential areas of Gaza City, according to indisputable evidence found an Amnesty International fact-finding team which reached the area last Saturday.” [ Amnesty , BBC ]

NOTE: 2/1/2010 Israeli army admits usage of white phosphorus

The UN said that “according to several testimonies, on January 4 Israeli foot soldiers evacuated approximately 110 Palestinians – half of whom were children – into a single-residence house in Zeitoun, warning them to stay indoors. Twenty-four hours later Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately 30. [Sydney Morning Herald]

While the vast majority of Palestinians were killed by conventional weapons, a Norwegian doctor, Erik Fosse, said injuries he had seen in Gaza were consistent with the use of Dime (dense inert metal explosive) bombs. “It was as if [patients] had stepped on a mine, but there was no shrapnel in the wounds,” he said. [Independent]

BBC catalogs some of the more troubling types of weapons used  – Flechette shells (shells with nails), Tank shells (with high degree of inaccuracy), Drone missiles (atypically inaccurate or deliberate murder).

‘Wanton’ destruction of homes in Gaza. [BBC ]

The reasons

Israel’s stated reasons for the assault on Gaza were roughly the following – “that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network” (LRB) and as part of ‘reaction’ or ‘response’ to violations of its borders. Dr. Siegman, professor with University of London, in the same LRB column, refutes these casually stated reasons, repeated ad infinitum in the news media, exposing both media’s complicity, and Israel’s wantonness in committing murder of 1300 plus people.

Some have argued that Israeli action was part of a strategy to preempt any doubts about Israel’s resolve to “protect” its territory, and punish even minor violations as a way to ward off imagined subsequent more major violations.  One can draw of Tzipi Livni’s statement, the assault on Gaza “restored Israel’s deterrence …Hamas now understands that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing” as corroboratory evidence.  However, the argument falters on a variety of grounds. Firstly, Israel carries a strong nuclear deterrent, and perhaps more powerfully, a superpower deterrent (America) – which preempts hostile countries or ‘hostile entities’ within countries from attempting anything. Secondly, most Arab nations have come around the idea of Israel, so no real or implied threat has been made.

From a strategic perspective, Israeli action may be seen as an effort to dent the nexus between Iran and Hamas. But, Israel’s continued allegations of a close nexus between Iran and Hamas (a Sunni organization) seem to falter under closer inspection. [Economist]

Most independent analysts have argued that the assault was committed with forthcoming elections, due February 10th, in mind; a recent Ha’aretz poll revealed that Ehud Barak, the defense minister, profited the most. Albeit the most cynical of the explanations, it seems the most plausible for the following reasons – given massive political benefits likely to accrue for any significant military action, no real down sides – except if the invasion is ‘botched’ as in Lebanon in 2006 – the incentives to commit a large scale invasion, and little respect for Palestinian lives, are many.

Analyses and Reflection

LRB also carries a selection of responses by a variety of political analysts and authors on Israel’s action in Gaza.

Roger Cohen writing for NYRB reflects – “I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions, so despairing of any peace that might terminate the dominion of the dead in favor of opportunity for the living.”

Shadid is one of the better journalists reporting from Iraq. His reporting from Iraq shows rare erudition and great care. This particular story, one of the more readable stories, made me think a little more about the reasons behind Western fascination with booksellers in exotic places. For example, Asne Seierstad a few years ago wrote to great success, ‘The Bookseller of Kabul’. Shadid’s story reminded me of a prominent story by NY Times on Baghdad’s theater scene and the sprinkling of stories you get about people behind Iraq’s orchestra etc. Shadid’s, Seierstad’s and others work can be seen as attempts to “humanize” the numerous who die anonymously in war zones across the globe. The way these able journalists “humanize” the “other” is by telling you how similar they are to us. More pointedly, they “humanize” the “other” by endowing them with cultural values that we value and admire – like reading books or going to theater. Of course this particular approach doesn’t bode well for the large numbers of humans who live and die in shanty towns with no or little access to education or for that matter hygiene and food. There are no redeeming cultural qualities in them that we can identify and think of them as our own –magically transform them into people whose loss disturbs us. The sad fact is that it is inconceivable for a lot of Americans to imagine people living in shanty town among mounds of garbage, with tattered clothes and emaciated bodies, to have a fully formed emotional life with their own frustrations and aspirations. It is almost as if these masses are a lower form of life – whose lives are as inconsequential as their deaths are immaterial. In fact why should they matter? Certainly economically their deaths don’t mean much – not for us for sure. The only way their deaths possibly matter is when they become part of cultural discourse and are needed to negotiate our cultural identities as self identified liberals or for that matter, right wing zealots who pooh-pooh these liberal sensitivities. It is this specific calculated role of third world calamities in identity negotiations that turn repeated exhortations, on say Darfur, by pedantic and zealous columnists like Nicholas Kristof, into “sexy” campus issues and not an iota more.

Iran with its proud distinguished history of the Persian empire, an exceptionally large cohort of people under 25, and relatively high education has been primarily showcased in Western news as a uni-dimensional country dominated by fundamentalist Shia clerics. Rageh documents a much more complex country in this documentary which is available free on Google Video at:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9161934809152225169&hl=en

In 1993, merely a year after Francis Fukuyama, a former student of Huntington, had announced the ‘end of history’, Huntington took to the pages of Foreign Affairs to describe his vision of the world riven with cultural cleavages. He argued that post-ideology- capitalism had already won the battle – culture would prove to be the organizing force within the world.

Huntington’s flawed work has attracted numerous adherents, especially in influential policy making departments of the West – for it fits nicely the racist stereotypes that they hold and works as a wonderful political tool – and spawned a kind of policy making that has turned Huntington’s naive theory into a self fulfilling prophecy.

Dominique Moisi, adds ‘emotion’ to Huntington’s idea of culture, and argues that its not really clash of civilizations as much as a ‘clash of emotions’- Asia displays a ‘culture of hope’, West a ‘culture of fear’, and the Arab world a ‘culture of humiliation’. Regardless of the theory itself, Moisi’s essay ends up looking like a product of his self-described West’s ‘culture of fear’.

Moisi’s analysis appears to be old wine in a new bottle. The new terminology Moisi cloaks his arguments in is often nothing more than a rehash of arguments made by Huntington or Bernard Lewis. What Moisi is really arguing about when he talks about Arab ‘culture of humiliation’ is that the Arab culture is stuck in historical paralysis, recounting the glory days of Islam and deeply resentful of West’s rise and yes, the formation of Israel.

Analyzing world by ascribing ‘emotional’ charges to entire regions of the world is at best a deeply flawed enterprise and to do so to make an often made point about how the West must work to end Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems like too much unnecessary exertion. Nations, let alone regions, are much more complex organisms. We cannot group together Egypt and Iran, with their significant pre-Islamic histories and large cosmopolitan populations with the largely urbanized Kuwait or Bahrain or Oman. Neither can we straddle Lebanon, with its French occupation and outward looking population, with Saudi Arabia, for little meaningful analysis will result from it. And while it is easy to get carried away with sloganeering, important forces that still shape foreign policy are still the hustle for resources and military supremacy.

If Moisi’s analysis about this ‘culture of humiliation’ is correct, I fail to see why countries in Asia would be so insulated from it. After all, both Indian and Chinese civilizations have seen equally, if not more so, impressive glory days of their respective civilizations. And a majority of Indians and Chinese are equally alienated by the ‘progress’ that has really meant westernization. The rise of Hindu nationalism in India and the associated communal tensions are arguably rooted in the ‘culture of humiliation’. More importantly, Moisi’s assessment of Asia’s culture of hope, seems deeply misplaced given there are more poor people in Asia that anywhere else in the world. It is also important to note that it is terrorists from South Asian country, Pakistan, that were implicated in the bomb blasts in London, and not people from the Arabian peninsula.

The overall point Moisi is interested in making is that the root of Arab ‘culture of humiliation’ is the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of course Israel has become a important rallying cry for myriad of Arabs but it has become so because criticizing it is the only authorized form of dissent as they live under authoritarian regimes that outlaw demonstrating about say lack of jobs. Even if we agree that Arab-Israeli conflict is an important emotive conflict, and it is – not only on the Arab street but in rest of the developing world for it is seen as an unabashed display of American Imperialism – it is still left to us to figure out why is it that the Arab world needs the West to solve conflict within the region? Moisi conveniently leaves out how Israel has been unabashedly armed, supplied and supported continuously by US and other western European countries.

Lets devote our energies to test the fundamental assumption that underpins Moisi’s analysis – the threat faced by the West from Arabs. Yes, Western Europe and US have seen some terrorist attacks but in terms of sheer number of casualties or damage, the impact has been minuscule. There is little rationale ground for fear of terrorism in the West, if we just predicate it on past incidences. Yes, Europe will have to face important questions about assimilation of Muslim immigrants and the nature and shape of society but to irrationally magnify those fears and make the basis of indulging in spiritless intellectual gymnastics is inexcusable. So perhaps inadvertently Moisi has stumbled on the key truth about global reality – the West fighting imaginary ghosts. Obviously Moisi only sees problem with the Muslim world – whose problems West needs to solve – so that it can live peacefully.

While Blair’s and Bush’s views on Iraq remain unchanged much like the catastrophic news from Iraq, views of technocrats and other politicians on Iraq have shown a metamorphism of sorts of recently.

Over the past few weeks, starting with the release of the study of mortality in Iraq by School of Public Health (SPH) at John Hopkins University, there have been a spate of news reports that have shed light on the failed policies in Iraq.

On October 11th, a study by Bloomberg School of public health at John Hopkins University, a university whose professors ironically were the primary flag bearers of the invasion, estimated that mortality rate in Iraq doubled post US invasion leading to the deaths of an additional 655,000 Iraqi civilians.

Two days later British Army Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, much to the chagrin of Mr. Blair, in an interview with BBC said that the continued presence of British troops on Iraqi soil “exacerbates the security problems”. The statement was remarkable not for its content, for it has been long obvious that the continued presence of foreign troops “without a timeline” and amidst reports of torture and usage of heavy handed tactics by foreign troops has only inflamed opinion in the Muslim world, but for who said it. The British general was joined yesterday by a US counterpart in the push to state the obvious. Military spokesman Maj Gen William Caldwell said that the US military strategy in Baghdad has been a failure. He pointed to the “disheartening” 22% rise in attacks in Baghdad since the end of last month” (BBC). President Bush went ever further when he acknowledged that the “escalation of violence “could be” comparable to the 1968 Tet Offensive against US troops, which helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.” (BBC)

If this wasn’t enough, Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, stated three days ago that violence in Iraq could end “within months” if Iran and Syria joined efforts to stabilize the country. (BBC) Talabani’s statement came against the backdrop of repeated assertions by US that it would not work with either of the countries.

The fount of statements mentioning what has long been obvious to lay observers should be taken in context. For more than three years the news on Iraq has been stage managed allowing for little dissent, especially from the top echelon. Of course generals, diplomats and politicians – all have alluded to the catastrophic failure of the US policy in Iraq at varying times but the “wisdom” has never been allowed to snowball into an extended skewering of the administration. With mid-term elections on the anvil and with democrats poised for major gains – the rose-tint of Republicans view on Iraq may finally be seen as blood.

There are two valuable lessons that emerge from these recent proclamations of the obvious. US troops have shown themselves to be single-handedly incapable of assuring security for Iraqis. Hence a timeline must be set for withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq or at the very least they should be moved to the fringes of security regime– responsible primarily for either manning borders or providing tactical support.

Secondly, Iran and Syria are critical for stability in Iraq. US, or better yet, Iraqi government led by Talabani should negotiate with Iran to recruit their help in managing the security scenario in Iraq.

Over the past few years suicide terrorism has come to be exclusively seen, in the west, as a terror tactic with no strategic objective and practiced by “people who hate our freedom” aka Muslim fundamentalists.

Dr. Pape, who over the years has “collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004″, using a variety of sources ranging from local newspapers to informational “products” from the “terrorist community”, found after analyzing the data that “overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.”

Of course the idea that some how “hating the freedom” that we have motivates people to blow themselves does not to stand up to any sort of reasoning. The clique of people who “hate our freedoms” obviously goes beyond Islamic fundamentalists. In the previous iteration it was Communists, who hated our freedoms, and yet there were very few, if any, suicide attacks against US or the posse of nations who considered themselves the beacon of freedom.

The idea that suicide terrorism is somehow tied to Islamic fundamentalism also falters for the most famous practitioners of suicide terrorism are a nationalist Hindu group, LTTE –better known as the Tamil Tigers.

Of course the Western media can’t go scot-free either. Western media outlets eager to portray Hezbollah as a Shiite militia backed by Iran and eager to portray Lebanese as a bunch of ‘enemy terrorists’ have overlooked the fact that “Hezbollah is principally neither a political party nor an Islamist militia. It is a broad movement that evolved in reaction to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982″ NY Times

Roger Pape, in his NY Times op-ed piece, adds,

“Evidence of the broad nature of Hezbollah’s resistance to Israeli occupation can be seen in the identity of its suicide attackers. Hezbollah conducted a broad campaign of suicide bombings against American, French and Israeli targets from 1982 to 1986. Altogether, these attacks — which included the infamous bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 — involved 41 suicide terrorists.

In writing my book on suicide attackers, I had researchers scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and the biographies of the Hezbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.”

“17 Israeli bombs fell within one kilometer, or .6 miles, of the post during the day, the initial U.N. investigation found. In addition, 12 Israeli artillery rounds landed within 150 meters of the post, four of them hitting it directly.”

[ Washington Post]

But then again Annan has shied away from ascribing ulterior motives to America’s favorite ally in the past. The thing that appears to have changed is the fact that now Annan is near the end of his second term and finally free of renomination worries.

Annan over the past five years has led a largely neutered UN. In fact post 9/11, UN has seemed like an organization sitting outside the door with a hang dog expression waiting for the master to finish up his job inside and come outside and pet it.

Now apparently trying to make the most of his position in the last few days, Annan has taken upon himself to issue a verbal rebukes about the many annoyances of leading a largely pointless organization with little credibility. Annan has chosen to vent his feelings through the media in almost a school boy fashion complaining to anybody who will hear.

Truth is that he squandered away his decade at the UN when he could have accomplished something more than aside from being America’s lapdog.

Update: Kofi Annan condemns “excessive use of force” by Israel. (BBC)

Lebanon civilian deaths morally not same as terror victims — John Bolton Yahoo News

Palestine:

“Whatever the Israelis’ intended target, the bomb fell on a small water canal next to the Qasmia refugee camp, home to about 500
Palestinians. Its victims were 11 children taking an afternoon swim in the canal.
The first blast left a crater nearly four meters deep, burying many of the swimmers deep under the orange earth. Seven of the children were injured, three critically. Three others have not been found.” Guardian: ‘Is Hizbullah here? Only children here.’ City mourns air strike dead

“The destruction of the 140-megawatt reactor, the only one in the Gaza Strip, threatens to create a humanitarian disaster because the plant supplies electricity to two-thirds of Gaza’s 1.3 million residents and
operates pumps that provide water supplies.” Boston Globe

In Pictures

• Click here to see Israeli girls writing messages on heavy artillery shells destined for Lebanese civilians.
• BBC Photos of Lebanon’s Destruction
• The toll of war
• Washington Post
• Youtube video
• Photos from the war

Lebanon:

“The New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch called on the Israeli military to provide details about a bombing Saturday that killed 16 people in a convoy of civilians fleeing a Lebanese village near Israel’s border.” Washington Post: Toll Climbs In Mideast As Fighting Rages On

“Fouad Siniora said more than 300 people had been killed and 500,000 others displaced in a week of Israeli attacks.” BBC

“The United Nations says about 500,000 are displaced internally in the country, either by choice or under Israeli fire.”BBC

“PARKED outside the small general hospital in Tyre is a badly refrigerated lorry container in which are stacked the bodies of 91 Lebanese civilians, 55 of them children.

The bodies have been placed inside black plastic rubbish bags and labelled in anticipation of the time, days or weeks from now, when their surviving relatives – if any – can come to collect them.” Sydney Morning Herald

“Over 30 civilians were killed in Israeli air strikes against Lebanon on Tuesday.

Ten civilians who had taken refuge inside the Greek Orthodox Church in Rachaya al-Fokhar were wounded in an attack. Lebanese security sources said Israel had used phosphorous missiles in the attack, an internationally banned weapon.” Daily Star

“Israeli planes struck targets in the east, south and the capital
Beirut, with a Christian district coming under fire for the first
time.”
BBC

An entire neighborhood of a southern Lebanese village is no more: All 15 houses were destroyed Wednesday in an airstrike by Israelis…
Israel’s onslaught, now in its second week, has wreaked its worst damage in the poor farming regions of southern Lebanon. Warplanes have blasted bridges and roads and turned villages into ghost towns as civilians flee, abandoning the area to Hezbollah guerrillas who continue to fire rockets on Israel and engage any ground force that advances from the border 12 miles to the south.
Seattle PI

Analysis:

• In his last interview – after the 1967 six-day war – the historian
  Isaac Deutscher, whose next-of-kin had died in the Nazi camps and
  whose surviving relations lived in Israel, said: “To justify or
  condone Israel’s wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad
  service indeed and harm its own long-term interest.” Guardian

• UN human rights chief Louise Arbour suggested Wednesday that the military operations being carried out in Lebanon, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories could be considered war crimes.
  
  The obligation to protect civilians during hostilities is entrenched in international law, “which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Arbour said in a statement.
  
  “The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control,” she added.
  Daily Star – Lebanon

• “The Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibits “collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism …” (Article 33). According to Article 147 of the Convention, “extensive destruction … not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly,” hostage-taking and “torture or inhuman treatment” are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and constitute war crimes. All state parties to the Convention are required to search for and ensure the prosecution of perpetrators of grave breaches of the said Convention.
  
  Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions codifies the principle of distinction, a customary rule of international humanitarian law: “In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operation only against military objectives.” (Article 48 ). International Humanitarian Law strictly prohibits attacks against civilians and civilian objects. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) includes as war crimes: “Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities”, and “Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects” (Article 8 2 (b) (i) and (ii)).” ‘Big News Network

• The Israel Lobby by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer

Letters
“Israel has now kidnapped a quarter of the parliament elected by the Palestinians, and half of its democratically elected government. They join thousands of other Palestinians illegally kidnapped or imprisoned, including over 300 children.” Signed by London Mayor Ken Livingstone among others. Guardian -End this punishment of the Palestinians

History

• UN resolution 425 – Demanding immediate withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon. It just took Israel 22 years to comply.
• washington post- brief history