<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1255">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2600.0" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Terrorism by any other name </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>By Gidon Levy in Ha'aretz</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Terrorism begets terrorism - there is no other way to
describe the violent relations that have developed between us and the
Palestinians. There is no need to elaborate on the cruelty of their terrorist
attacks, certainly not for the Israeli reader, and even less so after last
week's horrific suicide bombing in Haifa. Murderers of children are murderers of
children, without any ifs or buts. The debate is over our attacks, which we are
trying to conceal by definitions that soften them and with tortuous accounts and
excuses offered by the Israel Defense Forces, which do not always meet the test
of truth or reasonability. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Did an IDF tank fire a shell at a burning carpentry shop
last Thursday morning in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, killing
seven civilians? Lieutenant Colonel Dotan, commander of an armored battalion,
says no: "This is something they have to answer ... We do not fire shells at
stores ... I don't know if it is their store ...." </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>As the accounts offered by IDF officers proliferated, the
picture became increasingly foggy. Dotan admitted that his troops fired two
shells, but not at the carpentry shop, and added that they did not kill the
civilians. The images that were screened on television created the impression
that the civilians were killed by a shell. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>One version in the face of another - but does it really
matter? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The moment the IDF sends tanks into a densely crowded
refugee camp it puts all the inhabitants at risk. The moment the tanks open
fire, innocent people are bound to be hurt. Tanks in Jabalya cannot fire shells
without killing women and children, just as it was impossible to drop a one-ton
bomb on the house of Salah Shehadeh in Gaza without killing 15 civilians, mostly
children. Thus, anyone who decides to send tanks into Jabalya is making a
decision to kill civilians. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The test of intention - the terrorists intend to kill
civilians, whereas the IDF does not - is irrelevant. The Armored Corps soldiers
who fired shells in Jabalya may not have intended to kill civilians, but they
and their commanders killed civilians. They therefore bear the responsibility
for the killing. An operation to kidnap a wanted individual from Hamas in the
heart of Jabalya - a "surgical operation" in the spit-and-polish language of the
divisional commander, Brigadier General Gadi Shamni - that ends, as could be
expected, in a dozen Palestinians killed, most of them civilians, and
large-scale destruction, is an act of terrorism. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Did the IDF also kill Noha al Makadama, who was nine
months pregnant? Brigadier General Shamni said that "no substantiation was
found" for this, and the defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, said "the IDF has no
knowledge" of the case. What "substantiation" did the IDF think it could get
outside the testimony of the family members? And does it really matter? Makadama
was killed in her home while she was there with her 11 children while the IDF
demolished the adjacent building, causing the destruction of her house as well.
Anyone who blows up a building next to a building in which there are a pregnant
woman and 11 children without warning them, is responsible for their fate.
Killing a pregnant woman under these circumstances (two boys, aged 13 and 16,
were also killed in the same incident) is a terrorist attack against innocent
people. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Instead of insensitively disassociating themselves from
the brutal killing of a pregnant woman, the defense minister and the divisional
commander should have condemned the act, as they demand the Palestinian
Authority do after every terrorist attack against Israelis, or at least
apologized. But expressing regret? Us? After the killing of more than 2,000
Palestinians, many of them innocent civilians, no Israeli condemnation has yet
been heard. Everything we do in the territories, even if it involves killing and
destruction on a horrific scale, obtains immediate automatic backing and
justification. It is all done in self-defense and as part of the war against
terrorism. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>However, with such data of killing and destruction, this
version of events is no longer acceptable. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Israel's efforts at obfuscation are intended above all to
keep our conscience clean. This is false posturing that can no longer be
countenanced. When the IDF demolished a mosque on the "Philadelphi" route on the
outskirts of Rafah and immediately claimed that the building had been abandoned,
no one asked why the mosque had been abandoned. Here is the real sequence of
events: first the Gaza Strip is occupied, then settlements are established in
it, then guarded roads are built to protect the settlers. In the next stage,
after the Palestinians begin to rebel violently against the occupation, we begin
killing them until they are forced to abandon the mosque and indeed the entire
area. Finally the "abandoned" mosque is demolished. But to us it seems that only
the Palestinians destroy holy places, such as Joseph's Tomb. Our conscience is
pure and unblemished, always.<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>