By RICHARD COHEN — Civilian deaths in Gaza are almost instantaneously denounced as war crimes — a purposeful atrocity and not, as sometimes happens in war, a mistake. I n 1980, an Israeli diplomat met with Ronald Reagan as he was running for president. Reagan was furious over the hostages being held in the U.S. Embassy in Iran and told the diplomat he could not understand why Washington didn’t do what Israel would have done: land troops on the embassy roof and take the Americans out. The dismayed diplomat nodded disingenuously. Yes, that’s exactly what Israel would do. Reagan’s wholly unrealistic idea of Israeli capabilities still haunts the Jewish state. It helps account for why the bombings of schools, hospitals and homes in Gaza are almost instantaneously denounced as war crimes — a purposeful atrocity and not, as sometimes happens in war, a mistake. Israel, some feel, is too good to be so bad. There is, of course, reason for such admiration. Israel was created by defeating five Arab nations and won three subsequent wars. Soon, extraordinary feats seemed ordinary. In 1960, Israeli agents seized Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial. As a Nazi SS officer, he had been instrumental in the murder of more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews. In 1976, Israeli commandos flew 2,500 miles to Uganda to rescue 102 Israelis and other Jews taken off a hijacked airplane. Five Israeli commandos were wounded and the unit’s commander, Lt. Col. Jonathan Netanyahu, was killed. He was the current prime minister’s older brother. Israel developed a nuclear weapon in the 1960s. It has a formidable air force and a legendary intelligence service that is capable of monitoring just about every phone conversation in Gaza. Years ago, when Israel was fighting in Lebanon, I was shown aerial photos of a Beirut street that were so clear the license plates of parked cars could be read and matched with motor vehicle records. Israel knew who lived where. All these impressive technological feats, all this bravery and derring-do, suggest a kind of perfection. They suggest, further, that what seems like war crimes must indeed be war crimes because Israel does not make mistakes. Not only is this hardly true — a list of operations botched by the Mossad could fill the rest of this column — but it also veers into a kind of anti-Semitism. If the bombing of a school or hospital is not a mistake, then it must have been on purpose: Israel is the cold-hearted killer of children.
Posted on: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 16:47:17 +0000
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