Gwynne Dyer column misses the mark
I have said this before, but it bears repeating: for someone who produced and starred in an 8-part miniseries on “War,” Gwynne Dyer is astoundingly ignorant of how it is waged (Gwynne Dyer: Both sides capitalize on Palestinian despair; Saturday, May 19).
His comparison of the 1906 mass suicide in Bali with the recent events at the border between Gaza and Israel is a false analogy. Even assuming that his account is accurate, he purposely ignores the fact that the Balinese people who marched, unarmed, into the guns of the Dutch military were not invading the Netherlands, but defending their own land. The Palestinians of Gaza, on the contrary, are not defending their own land, but trying to breach the border and invade Israel. The Dutch were invaders; the Israelis are defenders. Dyer seems not to understand the difference.
He trots out the old “disproportionate use of force” argument: “a thousand unarmed Palestinians struck by Israeli bullets” versus “One Israeli soldier (who) was lightly injured by a rock or a piece of shrapnel.” A ridiculous argument: if someone half my size picks a fight with me, and I am forced to defend myself, the fact that he is injured and I am not does not change the basic facts: he started it, and I was justified in defending myself.
Does Dyer seriously believe that soldiers have a moral obligation to wait until the enemy is close enough to do serious harm before they take defensive action? Simply because Hamas orchestrated a situation in which the Israelis were forced to open fire does not make Hamas any less culpable.
Dyer repeatedly twists words to suit his own agenda. He sneeringly belittles the Israeli position, in the childish belief that we will be too embarrassed to question his analysis.
For example, he ridicules the idea that “the best way to sneak into Israel is to break through the border in broad daylight and make their way past thousands of heavily armed Israeli soldiers on full alert.” Unfortunately, that is not a ridiculous idea; it’s actually a very effective strategy, if you don’t actually care about the lives of your own civilians. It’s effective, because it puts Israel in a “no-win” situation. If they use deadly force to repel the invasion, which is their right under international law, then the world condemns them for “disproportionate use of force.” And if the Israelis allow the invasion? Well, then, you’ve just introduced hundreds of “vicious men (and women) who take pride in their atrocities” (The Foreigner) inside Israel’s borders, where they will proceed to slaughter Israeli citizens.
By the way, it doesn’t take “top-secret equipment” to identify a dead terrorist; it just takes a database and a camera with a telephoto lens. No doubt Israel does have more sophisticated technology and intelligence methods, but I’m not privy to them. Suffice it to say, Israel’s claim that at least 24 of the 60 Palestinians killed were known terrorists is not as far-fetched as Dyer wants us to believe. Why does he want us to believe that?
Dyer also deliberately misinterprets statements. He says “If (Netanyahu) truly believes (Hamas) could destroy Israel that way, then the country must be far weaker than anybody thought.” But Netanyahu never said that Hamas could destroy Israel; he only said that Hamas “intends to destroy Israel.”
By way of analogy, Sir Winston Churchill must certainly have believed that Hitler’s intent was to destroy Great Britain, but he never believed that German bombing of civilian targets like London and Coventry would achieve it. Was that a reason to allow the Luftwaffe free reign over the skies of the United Kingdom? Of course not, and Dyer knows it.
Dyer does acknowledge that Khalil al-hayya, “a senior official in the Hamas party,” said “the peaceful march of our people lured the enemy into shedding more blood.” (The emphasis on the word “lured” is Dyer’s.) He is correct in stating that Hamas “(sees) this ghastly event mainly in terms of political theatre.” He falsely states, without any attempt at justification, that Israel is equally guilty, even though no Israeli official has made any similar statements.
Dyer is right about one thing: “Hamas wanted the Israelis to commit a massacre of innocent civilians for its propaganda value.” There is no other reason why they would deliberately bring an 8-month old baby girl, let alone one with a heart condition, to such a protest, and knowingly expose her to the toxic fumes from thousands of burning tires. They wanted her dead, so that Israel would be blamed.
But he is wrong about almost everything else.
Bernice Abbey Carbonear