Some interim reflections on the 7th October Gaza War
JVL Introduction
Ran Greenstein is an Israeli-South African academic, living in Johannesburg, who has written extensively on Israel as an apartheid society, on boycotts, on the Israeli left and much else besides.
In an ongoing investigation he writes about the current situation.
The essay reposted below is the second of his analyses, published a few days before the ICJ is due to issue its interim report, getting to grips with the political and legal considerations that will underpin its intervention.
We link to the first essay below, and signal a further piece to come that will deal with the responses of Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank, and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
RK
This article was originally published by Academia on Sat 20 Jan 2024. Read the original here.
Gaza, the ICJ and Future Prospects (part 2)
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I find this article unconvincing and too long. Regard the main issues as follows
1. The illegal occupying force in control has no grounds from which to argue a self defence reason for its behaviour
2. Hamas alone has the right for self defence from the 75 years old ethnic cleansing NAkba initial offence, 56 odd years of illegal land theft, occupation and suppression, and the 16 years cruel siege and embargo of Gaza
3. In no way was the Hamas raid of 7/10/23 a surprise to the Israel government. There is a mass of evidence to prove this – amply covered by Global Research.org articles,; embedded US journalists in the Hamas raid,; Egypt’s statement that it warned Israel of the attack 3 days before( which was broadcast world wide in all, possible news media); statements made by the female intelligence staff members of IDF that they had intercepted Hamas plans and had alerted Netanyahu to .the attack before it happened etc
4.In fact , a full examination of the events of 7/10/23 needs to be set out. How many IDF soldiers were killed by Hamas How many Israelis killed by Hamas and how many by friendly Israeli fire eg by weapons Hamas did not have.etc. etc. It is clear that Netanyahuu allowed the deaths of Israelis to occur when it could have been avoided etc etc.
5. There are also reports that the IDF was told to stand down for 7 hours on the day that the attack took place
These are the sort of issues that should be talked about. Start at the beginnming
This article’s analysis of probable ICJ reasoning concentrates on lengthy and not particularly convincing legal arguments; whereas almost all expert commentary admits that, given the extremely contentious nature of the case for the US, the immediate outcome will almost certainly be a face saving politically determined fudge, which will make token cosmetic humanitarian demands of Israel, while failing to demand a ceasefire or effectively to end the massacres.
It is unfortunate that Greenstein repeats as fact emotive accusations of “the infliction of sexual violence on a large scale”, when there is considerable doubt about the authenticity of many of Israel’s claims, and the IDF has refused to allow any investigation by the UN or any international NGO. This is not to say that all such claims are untrue, but there is considerable evidence of deliberate exaggeration, and there is no evidence that such war crimes as occurred were ordered or intended by the Hamas leadership. By contrast there is far more documented evidence of the IDF’s systematic brutality towards Palestinian civilians even in the West Bank.
The recent Hamas document “Our Narrative” has been very selectively cited in the western media. It is an important political document which deserves its own critical analysis, and Greenstein is right to highlight the fact that Hamas’s political ideology is today very different from the Islamism of its founding charter, something which is consistently obscured by media propaganda. It would be good to see a critical evaluation of that document on this website.
The original article is interesting but Malcom’s comments are spot on.
It should be added that the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court is clearly dragging his feet; something that it is likely that South Africa took in account.
And there is also the use of that problematic term ‘antisemitism”; a term that appliers, or should apply, to prejudice against Palestinians. Language is one weapon in the armoury of reactionaries; and the Zionists are clearly past masters in the use of this tactic.
Most of the article concerns the likely ICJ interim ruling tomorrow and is therefore necessarily long, detailed and thorough. I’m really glad to have had a chance to understand better the issues the court will deal with and the strength of the opposing legal arguments. I certainly don’t complain about it being too long. I would add that the issues the previous commenter, Malcolm Bradstock, thinks should be discussed are not relevant to the court because they weren’t included in the complaint.
I also found the discussion about the nature of Hamas as it exists today very helpful and enlightening. Both of these aspects are under reported in other outlets and I’m very glad to have had a chance to read them.
On points 4 and 5 of Malcolm Bradstock’s post, there are a couple of recent[ish] articles following the events, timelines and numbers of Israelis killed by the IDF/IOF.
Jonathan Cook links to a whole host of the available information in his article “Israeli HQ ordered troops to shoot Israeli captives on 7 Oct” [inc. to original article, in Hebrew; translated into English] : “The Black Time, by Ronen Bergman & Yoav Zitun, publ. by Yedioth Ahronoth’s w/e supplement 7 Days, 12 Jan 2024; translated by Dena Shunra for The Electronic Intifada.” It contains a timeline from the day.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october
The Cradle “How Israeli forces trapped and killed ravers at the Nova Festival” https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/18526 is also very good.
Point 3 of Malcolm Bradstock’s comment contains some disproven and unevidenced assertions.
“embedded US journalists in the Hamas raid” was an allegation from Hasbara outfit Honest Reporting. They subsequently accepted that the photojournalists who covered the raids were freelance Palestinians, that the US and international agencies did not have prior knowledge of the raid and so on.
“Egypt’s statement that it warned Israel of the attack 3 days before” – No statement to this effect was made by Egypt, which denied the speculation, which started from one US Congressman who spoke of a supposed warning from Egypt about the likelihood of violence from Hamas, without specifying at what level of communication or whether the warning was specific as to the timing and nature of the violence.
“Statements made by the female intelligence staff members of IDF that they had intercepted Hamas plans and had alerted Netanyahu to the attack before it happened” . I have only read that they reported the field intelligence to their superiors, not the PM. Somewhere in the chain of command these warnings were dismissed.
It could be that the Israeli leadership wanted the attack to happen, as is implied, and delayed the Army response. It’s impossible to disprove that. But we don’t know.
Malcolm Bradstock is right to emphasise the fact that “a full examination of the events of 7/10/23 needs to be set out” and that a fog of lies envelops accounts in the world’s media. Unfortunately he ruins the credibility of his assertions by implying that he knows the answers, in support of which position he cites Global Research – I assume here that he refers to GlobalResearch.ca since the web address he mentions is obviously incorrect. This is a toxic manichean conspiracist outfit with a ‘progressive’ veneer run by Michel Chossudovsky, happy to act as propagandists for any of the planet’s most vile régimes provided that they are ‘anti-imperialist’, meaning at odds with the US. The website has also promoted numerous different conspiracy theories about COVID-19.
Bradstock’s interpretation of the claim that the 7th October attack was “no surprise” is ludicrous. It would require the entire political and military elite to have been in collusion with Netanyahu in a plan to allow Hamas to inflict horrific casualties on Israel, at a time when Netanyahu and the IDF leadership were fighting on opposite sides of a constitutional war, and without anyone leaking the conspiracy. There is evidence that Israel received some warnings in advance, but applying Occam’s razor, by far the the simplest probable explanation for the debacle is a combination of arrogance, racist hubris, male chauvinism and sheer incompetence.