Israel's Lunacy

From 1 AM this morning until about 45 minutes ago, around 4:30 AM, a man shouted and sang on the street below my studio apartment. Whether he was insane, drunk or stoned was unclear to me. If I had to pick one, I would say the first. I am almost positive that he is the same guy, a young white man of the street, who I ran into early one perfect quiet sunny morning in June as I returned from a run. It was 9 AM. The neighborhood still slept. The morning sky was sunny blue clear. The birds sang and bees danced. Then shooting through this cinematic perfection was this angry insane ranting. I thought the guy might be frying on acid.

At 1 AM this morning it began with loud bellicose tuneless singing. Then it devolved into the pattern I was familiar with from the sunny morning in June. He calls out to some invisible interlocutor. Calls out a name. Says something like, "I'm here! I love you!" That repeats for a time and then trails off. After listening to this for 30 minutes, I drifted off to sleep, and when I started to dream I dreamed inside this young insane guy's patter. I was dreaming his insanity.

But at least I slept. When I woke at 4 AM, someone from one of the nearby apartment buildings was shouting down his own insanity -- I guess he was not so lucky as I in being able to sleep -- at the insane guy on the street below. Lots of insanity.

That is the world today. There are those of us who wake early every morning and study the news, note the contradictions in the official narrative provided by the media monopoly, attempt to draw attention to the pathological levels of violence practiced by the dominant powers, and basically make some attempt (in my case, quite meager) to point out the ruses, the lies, the divisiveness as the great game is played on the grand chessboard. We occupy what is known as the "lunatic fringe."

Real lunacy is on front-page display lately. Israel, in its slaughter of innocent women and children in Gaza, has now picked a fight with the United Nations. But before getting to that story, let us note that the Kerry-brokered ceasefire which began at 8 AM this morning has already collapsed. There was an exchange of fire between the IDF and Hamas at a tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza. A Israeli soldier was captured by Hamas. Israel responded with saturation bombing of Rafah. According to Isabel Kershner and Fares Akram in "Gaza Cease-Fire Collapses; Israeli Soldier Is Captured":

Gaza health officials said that 35 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 wounded as Israeli forces bombarded the area. Palestinian witnesses said by telephone that Israeli tank shells hit eastern Rafah as residents returned to inspect homes they had evacuated. 

Hamas blamed Israel for violating the truce, saying in a statement that the announcement about the capture of one of its soldiers was “to cover up the barbaric massacres, especially in Rafah.”

The Kerry ceasefire lasted 90 minutes. How could it be sustained when it allowed the IDF to continue military operations against Palestinian "terror tunnels"? So it wasn't really a ceasefire to begin with; its short duration proved.

But on the front page of the Gray Lady this morning is the story penned by two reliable court scribes, Michael Gordon and Mark Landler, "Cease-Fire in Gaza Conflict Takes Effect as Talks Are Set," praising the U.S. Secretary of State for his hard work putting the ceasefire together. The idea was to have a ceasefire that would freeze the IDF's forward operations in Gaza but let it continue to root about for the "terror tunnels" in places it had troops. Hamas could respond if fired upon. In the meantime, all the players were rushing to Cairo to begin negotiations. The U.S. was sending heavy hitters like William Burns, the guy who got the nuclear talks with Iran cooking. The hope was that enough progress would be made in three days to extend the ceasefire.

An important passage in the Gordon/Landler story is the likely failure of any bargaining between Israel and Hamas:

The substance of the negotiations will be no less tricky than the choreography. Israel and Hamas have both said they will not be satisfied with a “quiet-for-quiet” deal like those that ended violence in 2012 and 2009. 

Hamas, and the broader Palestinian leadership, is demanding a lifting of all Israeli restrictions on import, export, farming and fishing, as well as an opening of the border crossings — which depends not only on Israel but on Egypt. 

Mr. Netanyahu has increasingly emphasized the need to demilitarize Gaza — a process that some say can be accomplished only by Israel effectively reoccupying Gaza — and will be looking for an international mechanism to guarantee that Hamas’ rocket stockpile will not be replenished and that it will not be able to dig new tunnels into Israel.

Mr. Abbas may have his own set of demands, like the release of long-serving prisoners in Israeli jails who were supposed to be freed as part of the American-brokered peace talks that collapsed in April. Hamas has also asked for the release of some 50 men, who were freed in a 2011 exchange for an abducted Israel soldier and rearrested during an Israeli crackdown in June.

With the collapse of the ceasefire and Israel's resumption of saturation bombing of defenseless civilians, the story to read is Somini Sengupta's "Tensions Escalate Between Israel and a Second Party in Gaza: The United Nations." Israel has declared war on the United Nations.

Gaza, since Israel's 2007 blockade, is now more than ever a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) responsibility. UNRWA feeds 800,000 of Gaza's population of 1.7 million.

In public, the war of words intensified this week, with the United Nations blaming Israel for an attack that killed at least 19 people who were taking refuge at a United Nations school early Wednesday and Israel, in turn, accusing the world body of helping Hamas.

The United Nations has been dragged into the conflict: Eight of its staff members have been killed in the past 24 days, and more than 100 of its facilities have come under fire, including the school. United Nations officials said they had repeatedly told Israel of its exact location. 

The deputy secretary general, Jan Eliasson, a former Swedish diplomat, was visibly riled on Wednesday when he publicly reminded Israel of the Geneva Conventions, which established international law governing warfare. In Geneva, the United Nations’ top human rights official, Navi Pillay, raised the prospect of war crimes. 

Christopher Gunness, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency spokesman in Gaza, broke down at the end of an interview with Al Jazeera, which promptly went viral. And Pierre Krähenbühl, the commissioner general of Unrwa, the agency responsible for aiding Palestinians, told the Security Council on Thursday that military operations had been “waged with excessive — and at times disproportionate — force in densely populated urban settings.”

Israel has responded by mocking the UN as a tool of Hamas, a position that even the U.S. cannot parrot. This is from the Gordon and Landler story:

The White House on Thursday came closer than it had since the conflict began to criticizing Israel’s actions, saying it did not dispute the United Nations’ conclusion that Israel was responsible for the shelling. 

“What we are simply asking the Israelis to do — in fact, urging the Israelis to do — is to do more to live up to the standards that they have set for their own military operations to protect the lives of innocent civilians,” the press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters. 

Mr. Earnest called the strike on the school “totally unacceptable and totally indefensible.”

But behind closed doors, the United States is blocking any condemnation of Israel's bloody assault by the United Nations Security Council. Sengupta says:

Regardless of the verbal volleys, there is little that United Nations officials can do without instructions from the Security Council. The Council met Thursday for more than three hours behind closed doors, but failed to reach consensus on a proposed statement that would have condemned attacks on United Nations installations. Diplomats said they were stuck on language that would have also condemned the use of its facilities to store rockets. 

In the past, the United Nations has been useful in supporting political deals and keeping warring parties at bay in the Middle East: One of its first peacekeeping missions was in the Golan Heights. The tensions now may make it far more difficult for the United Nations to play that role. 

As the Security Council met behind closed doors, the Palestinian envoy, Riyad Mansour, shoulders hunched, rued that it had not taken any legally binding steps to end the fighting. “There’s a big test for the 15 members in the chamber as they are deliberating right now — I think tests to their hearts, tests to their conscience, tests to their brains — whether they’ll condemn these crimes,” Mr. Mansour said. 

Like his Israeli counterpart, he was not too bullish on the international community. He said the people of Gaza “feel the international community is failing them.”

Israel has gone too far. The BDS Movement will flourish. The Intifada will ignite the West Bank and Israel. The U.S. has no more moral legitimacy to shield Israel from the rest of the world.