Method and Madness: The Hidden Story of Israel's Assaults on Gaza (19 page)

 
67.
  UN Panel, p. 27, para. 46, citing the Israeli Turkel Report, pp. 53–58, 111 (see also Turkel Report, pp. 91–92).

 
68.
  UN Panel, p. 40, para. 72, p. 42, para. 77. The UN Panel also appears to allege, copying from the Israeli Turkel Report, that the recent decrease in Hamas rocket and mortar attacks on Israel has somehow been related to the naval blockade (pp. 40–41, para. 72, citing the Israeli Turkel Report, pp. 92–93). The basis for this claim is, to put it charitably, on the thin side, not least because the UN Panel adduces no evidence that weapons
ever even reached Gaza by sea
.

 
69.
  Between August and December 2008, Israel let six vessels pass into Gaza (Israeli Turkel Report, pp. 35, 59).

 
70.
  Ibid., p. 36; my emphasis.

 
71.
  UN Panel, p. 68, para. 151.

 
72.
  Ibid., p. 43, para. 78 (see also ibid., p. 41, para. 72). The UN Panel delineates the proportionality test in this context as “whether any damage to the civilian population in Gaza caused by the naval blockade was excessive when weighed against the concrete and direct military advantage brought by its imposition.”

 
73.
  Ibid., p. 87, para. 33. See also International Committee of the Red Cross,
Customary International Humanitarian Law, Volume I, Rules
(Cambridge: 2005), p. 189.

 
74.
  Israeli Turkel Report, p. 66:

             
The absence of a commercial port is not a decisive factor, since it is clear that it is possible to find other ways of transporting goods arriving by sea, such as by means of unloading the goods with the help of fishing boats. Moreover, the assumption that goods cannot be transported into the Gaza Strip in the absence of a commercial port inherently contradicts the main purpose of the blockade, i.e., preventing the passage of weapons to the Gaza Strip, since, according to the same logic, it would not be at all possible to transport weapons to the Gaza Strip by sea.

 
75.
  Ibid.

 
76.
  UN Panel, p. 48, para. 92.

 
77.
  Ibid., p. 49, para. 96, p. 67, para. 148, pp. 67–68, para. 149, p. 71, para. 159.

 
78.
  See
Chapter 2
above.

 
79.
  UN Panel, p. 68, para. 151, p. 69, para. 154.

 
80.
  Ibid., p. 4 (viii), p. 61, para. 134, p. 68, para. 151.

 
81.
  Israeli Turkel Report, pp. 222–25.

 
82.
  UN Panel, p. 46, paras. 86–87.

 
83.
  Ibid., p. 47, para. 89.

 
84.
  The Israeli Turkel Report flatly says (p. 66): “The goal of the Flotilla was obviously not just to break the blockade, but also to bring international pressure to bear in a bid to end the land based restrictions.”

 
85.
  Compounding obscenity by imbecility, the UN Panel (p. 47, para. 88, p. 48, para. 93) also condemns this clique of publicity-plotters for not sufficiently warning the other passengers of the dangers that lurked in the event that they attempted to breach the blockade. As if the other activists who joined the flotilla hadn’t a clue that Israel was capable of inflicting violence.

  
1.
   Aluf Benn, “Israel Killed Its ‘Subcontractor’ in Gaza,”
Haaretz
, 14 November 2012.

  
2.
   Reuven Pedatzur, “Why Did Israel Kill Jabari?,”
Haaretz
, 4 December 2012.

  
3.
   International Crisis Group,
Fire and Ceasefire in a New Middle East
(22 November 2012).

  
4.
   See
Chapter 2
and
3
above. For the provenance of the 99 percent figure, see the Goldstone Report (
Report of the United
Nations
Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
(25 September 2009)), para. 1188.

  
5.
   Barak Ravid, “During Gaza Operation, Netanyahu and Obama Finally Learned to Work Together,”
Haaretz
(26 November 2012).

  
6.
   Inbal Orpaz, “How Does the Iron Dome Work?,”
Haaretz
(19 November 2012); Charles Levinson and Adam Entous, “Israel’s Iron Dome Battled to Get Off the Ground,”
Wall Street Journal
(26 November 2012). For more on Iron Dome, see
Chapter 6
below.

  
7.
   Dan Williams, “Some Gaza Rockets Stripped of Explosives to Fly Further,”
Reuters
(18 November 2012).

  
8.
   Shortly after Pillar of Defense ended, MIT missile defense expert Theodore Postol, who initially swallowed Israeli propaganda, disputed its claims about Iron Dome (Paul Koring, “Success of Israel’s Iron Dome Effectiveness Questioned,”
Globe and Mail
(29 November 2012).

  
9.
   Ben Dror Yemini, “Ceasefire Now,”
NRG-Ma’ariv
(18 November 2012).

 
10.
  Fares Akram, Jodi Rudoren and Alan Cowell, “Hamas Leader Dares Israel to Invade Amid Gaza Airstrikes,”
New York Times
(19 November 2012).

 
11.
  See
Chapter 6
below.

 
12.
  In a diplomatic side note to Netanyahu, Obama vaguely promised to “help Israel address its security needs, especially the issue of smuggling of weapons and explosives into Gaza” (Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, 21 November 2012).

 
13.
  Barak Ravid, “Behind the Scenes of Israel’s Decision to Accept Gaza Truce,”
Haaretz
(22 November 2012).

 
14.
  “Turkey’s Erdogan Calls Israel a ‘Terrorist State,’”
Reuters
(19 November 2012).

 
15.
  For the
Mavi Marmara
assault, see
Chapter 4
above.

  
1.
   Benjamin S. Lambeth,
Air Operations in Israel’s War against Hezbollah: Learning from Lebanon and getting it right in Gaza
(Arlington, VA: 2011), p. 97 (preplanning); Uri Blau, “IDF Sources: Conditions not yet optimal for Gaza exit,”
Haaretz
(8 January 2009), and Barak Ravid, “Disinformation, Secrecy, and Lies: How the Gaza offensive came about,”
Haaretz
(28 December 2008) (preplanning).

  
2.
   Jack Khoury, “Abbas: Palestinian unity government will recognize Israel, condemn terrorism,”
Haaretz
(26 April 2014); Jeffrey Heller, “Netanyahu Urges World Not to Recognize Palestinian Unity Government,”
Reuters
(1 June 2014); Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies,
The US Stance on the Palestinian Unity Government
(Doha: 19 June 2014).

  
3.
   An Israeli spokesperson pinned blame for the kidnappings on a Hamas cell acting independently and Hamas’s leadership later confirmed the Israeli account, but a Hamas official in Turkey alleged higher-level Hamas coordination. He would not be the first Hamas blowhard, or he might have taken an initiative unbeknownst to Hamas’s leadership. Amos Harel and Yaniv Kubovich, “Revealed: Behind the scenes on the hunt to find kidnapped teens,”
Haaretz
(1 July 2014); Katie Zavadski, “It Turns Out Hamas May Not Have Kidnapped and Killed the 3 Israeli Teens After All,”
New York
(25 July 2014); Amos Harel, “Notes from an Interrogation: How the Shin Beth gets the lowdown on terror,”
Haaretz
(2 September 2014).

  
4.
   Human Rights Watch, “Serious Violations in West Bank Operations” (3 July 2014).

  
5.
   “Netanyahu to US: ‘Don’t ever second-guess me again,’”
ynetnews.com
(2 August 2014;
http://tinyurl.com/qbv9bzw
).

  
6.
   Nathan Thrall, “Hamas’s Chances,”
London Review of Books
(21 August 2014); Assaf Sharon, “Failure in Gaza,”
New York Review of Books
(25 September 2014).

  
7.
   Here as elsewhere,
Hamas
is used as short-hand for all Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.

  
8.
   “The Full Text of the Egyptian Ceasefire Proposal,”
Haaretz
(15 July 2014); Barak Ravid, “Secret Call between Netanyahu, al-Sissi Led to Abortive Cease-fire,”
Haaretz
(16 July 2014).

  
9.
   “Israel and Hamas Ceasefire Begins,”
BBC
(19 June 2008); “Text of Israel-Hamas Cease-fire Agreement,”
Jerusalem Post
(21 November 2012).

 
10.
  Menachem Shalev, “Netanyahu Recommends Large-Scale Expulsions,”
Jerusalem Post
(19 November 1989).

 
11.
  Amnesty International,
Israel/Gaza Conflict: Questions and answers
(25 July 2014); “Jeremy Bowen’s Gaza Notebook: ‘I saw no evidence of Hamas using Palestinians as human shields,’”
New Statesman
(25 July 2014); Kim Sengupta, “Israel-Palestine Conflict: The myth of Hamas’s human shields,”
Independent
(21 July 2014). This chapter doesn’t address the particularities of human rights violations by either side because the relevant reports have not yet been published at the time of writing.

 
12.
  Sudarsan Raghavan, “Month-long War in Gaza Has Left a Humanitarian and Environmental Crisis,”
Washington Post
(9 August 2014).

 
13.
  Amnesty International, “UN Must Impose Arms Embargo and Mandate an International Investigation as Civilian Death Toll Rises” (11 July 2014).

 
14.
  Norman G. Finkelstein,
Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish romance with Israel is coming to an end
(New York: 2012), pp. 123–54.

 
15.
  Human Rights Watch, “Gaza: Airstrike deaths raise concerns on ground offensive” (22 July 2014).

 
16.
  Marissa Newman, “Israeli Official Confirms US Nixed Arms Shipment,”
Times of Israel
(14 August 2014).

 
17.
  Gareth Porter, “US Avoided Threat to Act on Israel’s Civilian Targeting,”
Inter Press Service
(12 August 2014).

 
18.
  Ramsey Cox, “Senate Passes Resolution in Support of Israel,”
The Hill
(17 July 2014); Connie Bruck, “Friends of Israel,”
New Yorker
(1 September 2014).

 
19.
  David Hearst, “Saudi Crocodile Tears over Gaza,”
Huffington Post
(28 July 2014).

 
20.
  “Arab League Urges ‘All Parties’ to Back Egypt’s Gaza Truce Plan,”
Arab News
(15 July 2014).

 
21.
  See
Chapter 5
above.

 
22.
  Robert Kozak, “Israel Faces Latin American Backlash,”
Wall Street Journal
(30 July 2014).

 
23.
  Nahum Barnea, “Tumbling into Gaza, and Climbing Out Again,”
ynetnews.com
(29 July 2014;
http://tinyurl.com/ppcy3rd
); Nidal al-Mughrabi, “Exclusive: Hamas fighters show defiance in Gaza tunnel tour,”
Reuters
(19 August 2014); Gili Cohen, “Tunnel Vision on Gazan Border,”
Haaretz
(17 July 2014); Mark Perry, “Why Israel’s Bombardment of Gaza’s Neighborhood Left US Officers ‘Stunned,’”
america.aljazeera.com
(27 August 2014;
http://tinyurl.com/m6z4k3y
).

 
24.
  Norman G. Finkelstein,
“This Time We Went Too Far”: Truth and consequences of the Gaza invasion
, revised and expanded edition (New York: 2011), pp. 76–80.

 
25.
  Amos Harel, “Using Gaza Lessons to Prepare for Next Hezbollah War,”
Haaretz
(7 August 2014).

 
26.
  Amos Harel, “Gaza War Taught Israel Time to Rethink Strategies,”
Haaretz
(5 August 2014).

 
27.
  Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (
www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/article/20714
); “Operation Protective Edge Cost Israel $4.3 Billion,”
jns.org
(6 August 2014;
http://tinyurl.com/oxjrc5j
).

 
28.
  Finkelstein,
“This Time,”
pp. 63, 80.

 
29.
  Theodore Postol, “The Evidence That Shows Iron Dome is Not Working,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
(19 July 2014).