Israeli Self-Defense or Self-Attack?

The explosive report published this past Saturday in the Haaretz pinpointed the blame on the Israeli army itself for bombing and killing its own people at the Nova Festival in Re'eem on October 7th. It is a stunning admission that will have substantial repercussions on the current Israel War on Gaza, and more importantly what will happen after it ends.

The truth came out due to Israeli society blaming the national Police, who are tasked with internal security, for not protecting the festival participants. The police essentially responded by saying Hamas had no idea about the festival; rather, it was the Israeli army helicopter's panicked and  indiscriminate bombing of the festival that razed innocent Israelis to the ground and charred others--eventually attracting the attention of Palestinian fighters who had been headed in a completely different direction. The report stopped short of saying how many of the 346 festival goers were killed by Israeli fire; but it did say that among  the worst atrocities were likely the result of Israeli fire, not Hamas, since Hamas does not have heavy weapons that could have caused it.

This report is damning because it only confirms prior reports by Israeli witnesses in several Kibutzes, who admitted having being fired upon by Israeli tanks, with houses burnt or destroyed with everyone in them. If Israel did it in Re'eem, surely it cannot deny doing it in all the other Kibutzes ... 

This report underlines once more Israel's calamitous response to October 7th, possibly pointing to a gross overreaction in terms of firepower used, not only on Palestinians but even on Israeli citizens! Equally dire is that it weakens an already weak justification for the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians, and it does so in several ways: 

First, it questions the intent of Hamas to indiscriminately kill civilians in the first place and specifically festival goers in what has been referred to as a "turkey shoot", which in turn was used to justify Israel's current ad hoc retaliation in Gaza to kill innocent civilians. But if Hamas didn't even kill most of the festival goers, what justification does Israel have for its indiscriminate and incessant killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank and at such scale?

Second, Israel initially cited the degree of barbarity, comparing Hamas to the likes of ISIS, by showcasing charred bodies etc. They would later imply that the ensuing hell Israel unleashed on Gaza was a commensurate response, notwithstanding international norms. They used this argument to basically justify, mostly to Western media, their inhumane actions against Palestinian civilians and to circumvent restrictions set by international law. But if this barbarity had actually been self-imposed by Israel's own air force, where does it leave their narrative and it's international legality?

And third, Israel has been trying to show the world its unity over the war, and that all of Israeli society "democratically" stands behind its violent campaign in Gaza. Evidently, protests against the war within Israel as well as the Haaretz report, quoting Israeli Police, paint an opposing picture: There are clear differences of opinion inside of Israel as to the war's objectives, how it's being conducted, and how and when it should end.

But this doesn't even scratch the surface of the massive problem for Israel. If some of the crimes against Israel were perpetrated by Israelis themselves, where does this leave its standing with the international community vis-a-vis the crimes it perpetrated against the Palestinians? Will Israel now be held to account by its own people for its crimes? Will its leaders be persecuted in the UN or through the International Court of Justice for crimes against the humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians ? And can anyone who aided and abetted Israel, like the US, be prosecuted in court for providing Israel with the weapons to conduct its unjustified crimes? 

As for Israel's legal argument, how do the latest revelations transform its claim of self-defense when it seems clear now that the worst atrocities may  actually have occurred in an Israeli self-attack? Realizing internal Israeli and global Jewish opposition to what is going on, will the self-defense argument be able to stand on solid footing? Meaning, will its current crimes against civilians not dilute its own legal standing, at best making it less of a Western darling and at worst turning it into a militaristic pariah state, dragged through international courts for crimes against humanity, while garnering less and less sympathy from anyone? 

Israel is in a bind and so is the international community that has been arming and egging it on. Every day the war extends, and the atrocities in Gaza pile up, will see them digging deeper into a hole of lawlessness. Can this downward spiral be reversed? And more importantly, will the international community be able to retain any  international norms, rights, and lawfulness once this storm blows over, if it allows Israel to go unpunished for its crimes against humanity? The answers to these questions might very well determine the course of global geopolitics and foreign relations among peoples for generations to come ...

How Israel just lost the war ... to a Palestinian hospital!

Over the past few days and weeks, Israel has been trying to convince the world of the narrative that Palestinian hospitals in Gaza are nothing but bases for Hamas. They suggested that they were launching pads to rockets, had underground tunnels, housed fighters, were command and control centers, and were even likely to be where many abducted Israelis were being held.

As a result, they argued that they were justified to intentionally and freely bomb any hospitals, deny them water, electricity, and fuel, in what has been described as a first in modern warfare. Unfortunately, much of the so-called civilized world's leaders appear to have  bought the story and watched on, denying albeit a temporary ceasefire.

It would all come to a head with Israel facing off against Al Shifa hospital, the oldest and grandest of Gazan hospitals. The hospital is in fact older than the State of Israel itself having been founded in 1946, and it is formed of a large multi-edifice complex with a large courtyard in the middle.

In the past few days, Al Shifa received multiple warnings and was fired upon on multiple occasions, with the _New York Times_ confirming that the attack last week was of a projectile that was indeed Israeli, into the complex courtyard, which they knew was now housing civilians seeking shelter from all the indiscriminate bombings. The explosion was filmed and it caused the injury of several among which was a young victim, who was pictured with a severed leg screaming in agony.

Israel's war on Al Shifa continued and it soon encircled the hospital announcing to the Israeli public that the grand prize was within reach. Interestingly, the grand prize was no longer the elimination of Hamas or any other such fanciful project. It was the taking of Al Shifa!

The siege would last days and the warnings flew as often as the bombs, with Israel suggesting everyone inside flee. Those inside, including doctors, nurses, and staff refused to leave their patients behind. Newspaper pictures that beamed across the world help explain why: The hospital wards were full of patients, being treated, notwithstanding the severe shortages of medical supplies, electricity, oxygen, and water.

One specific ward shocked the world. It was the children's ward with multiple newborn babies, four of whom, it was reported, had been recently extracted from the wombs of their deceased mothers in emergency cesarian acts to save them. They were pictured trying to catch a breath in a world gone inhumanely mad around them, not even showing them an inkling of mercy. How they must wish to have never been born or to be dead along with their mothers?

Israel's media war reached a frenzy, expecting a climax with the entry of the Israeli army into the hospital on Wednesday, November 15th, following a barrage of meaningless statements, such as precise targeting and the like that meant nothing to the lifeless, limbless, and soulless ... In went the army, warning the hospital chief and doctors once more to leave. They refused. The Israelis  started searching the hospital, and searching, and searching ... only to find that there was no armed presence, no tunnels, no prisoners. Only the death, destruction, and misery they had caused.

In Al Shifa, they did find something else, which they will be hard pressed to deny. Defiance! The hospital defied the entire might of the Israeli army, continued with its mission and laid bare for the entire world to see the unbridled and naked aggression of the Israeli army on civilians, even those who had taken shelter within the hospital.

Desperate to find something, the Israeli army might be drawn to find a tunnel here or there. With 500 Kms of them crisscrossing the Gaza strip's 360 KM2, any high schooler could have told them that it means it is highly probable that every square kilometer would have one or two kilometers worth of tunneling underneath, most without anyone's knowledge, not even evidently the Israeli intelligence, which seemingly remains clueless.

 The war will likely come to a stop soon as it must, with Israel having achieved little if any political objectives: Hamas is still standing, the abductees are still at large, and the rockets never ceased flying into Israel. While the future remains unclear, what is indeed clear is that Israeli policies of demonizing the Palestinians have fallen flat, and people throughout the whole world have come to recognize it through protests from Australia to California and everywhere in between.

Israel has been stood up by a defiant Palestinian hospital.  Without the firing of a single bullet, Al Shifa has shot down the Israeli hypothesis that the Palestinians were all criminally complicit in their crime against Israel, deserving such collective punishment. The indiscriminate civilian bombing, ad hoc destruction of schools, hospitals, and religious sites have all lost their justification; and it is now up to the world to hold the Israelis responsible for these crimes to account, just as the Jews themselves once did to those who perpetrated crimes against their own during WW2.