Tennis Player in Tel Aviv

From Columbia Magazine: "Death Rights: A postmortem legal expert visits the “Bodies” exhibit

2011-01-09T09:00:00.000-08:00

The following was published in Columbia Magazine, by Paul Hond.

There are the death-curious, the death-fixated, and the death-obsessed. Then there is Norman Cantor.

On a rainy, dreary day last autumn, Cantor ’67LAW, a soft-spoken academic from Hoboken who for 25 years taught a seminar at the Rutgers School of Law called Death and Dying, took the ferry to Manhattan to visit Bodies: The Exhibitionat the Exhibition Centre on Fulton Street. He wore a bright-blue windbreaker stitched with the seal of the Israel Tennis Center and kept it zipped up snugly over his retired professor’s paunch. He went into the old brick warehouse, got his senior discount, and entered the show with some misgivings.

Illustration by Daniel Zalkus

Inside the dimly lit rooms of the gallery were about 20 human bodies in various stages of dissection, preserved through the technique of plastination, by which water and lipids are replaced with polymers and dyes. The finished product is both remarkably lifelike and strangely inhuman. Facial features are erased in the process, destroying individuality. The flayed bodies in Cantor’s midst were arranged in familiar poses: A male cadaver, strung with muscle and ligaments, carried a football in the yearbook style of a collegiate star; a cadaver and a skeleton faced each other, fingertips touching, like dancers in a pair spin; and a sinewy conductor raised his baton, doubtless for a performance of “Funeral March of a Marionette.” Elsewhere, discrete organs and bodily systems, extracted in all their intricacy and fineness, lay miraculously intact, accompanied by eye-popping facts on wall placards (the human body contains 60,000 miles of blood vessels!) that buttressed the semblance of an anatomy lesson.

“Opponents of these types of exhibitions claim that they’re voyeuristic and disrespectful, and that it’s offensive to exploit human remains in that way,” Cantor said as his eye wandered over a skull veiled by a net of red blood vessels. “The bodies at this exhibition are even more controversial, because most, if not all of them, come from China, and the suspicion is that many of these people were executed Chinese prisoners. The exhibitors say they obtained the bodies legally, according to Chinese law. The problem is that China wasn’t really giving the prisoners’ families a chance to object to the sale of the bodies, and the exhibitors admit that they cannot show explicit consent by the decedents.”

In his new book, After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver, Cantor conducts a legal and historical examination of the disposition and treatment of the human corpse that leaves no stone unturned. Among entries on premortem planning, body snatching, medical dissection, autopsies, disposal methods (including green burials), and legal protections for the human carcass, Cantor devotes several pages to the mother of all cadaver spectacles, Body Worlds, created by the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who invented plastination in the 1970s and, like an artist, signs his works. Cantor deems the provenance of von Hagens’s cadavers “more kosher” than those at Bodies. “It does trouble me a little bit,” he said, pausing before a glass case containing a central nervous system, which resembled a large fishbone, “to think of the origins of these pieces.”

But Cantor is no moralist. He doesn’t object to such exhibitions, with their whiff of acetone and sideshow sleaze, so long as the decedents gave their permission. His attitude is pretty much “die and let live.” In After We Die, he cites an American poet who wanted his skin to be used to bind his own writings, and a man in the Galilee who wished for his body to be left in the wilderness and eaten. In both cases, the courts ruled that these methods were inherently disrespectful toward human remains. Cantor isn’t so sure. “I don’t think it would necessarily be a desecration of human remains if you incorporated them into a book, a pair of shoes, or a work of art,” he said. “If you wanted to wear a lock of someone’s hair in a locket, why not a piece of finger?”

Cantor’s interest in such matters can be traced back to 1973, when his stepbrother, a criminal attorney who had a chronic illness, passed away at age 39, leaving instructions for a New Orleans-style funeral. The widow was to wear white, and a Dixieland jazz band was to lead the procession from the funeral home in Trenton. (The family reluctantly complied.) Thirty years and many Death and Dying seminars later, Cantor read about Ted Williams, whose children were in a legal scuffle over whether baseball’s last .400 hitter should, according to his conflicting desires, be cryogenically frozen or cremated and scattered over the Florida Keys. Cantor wondered: Even if Williams’s wish to be resurrected were undisputed, would the responsible parties be bound to implement it if they found cryonics abhorrent? (Williams’s remains are currently being stored in pots of liquid nitrogen at a cryonics facility in Scottsdale, Arizona.) Could a corpse, in short, have legal rights?

The answer, of course, is yes — you can’t, for instance, rob a grave, or wantonly mistreat a body — but when it comes to the more whimsical aspirations of the departed, Cantor feels the courts are too restrictive. Which isn’t to say he’s laissez-faire. “There are limits of decency and good taste,” he said, walking past what looked like a nice rack of lamb from Lobel’s. “In 2009, von Hagens had a display in Germany in which two corpses were copulating. To me, that was beyond the pale. People objected strenuously, and in his next exhibition he did not use copulating corpses.”

Cantor skimmed other curiosities: a gallstone-afflicted gallbladder like a closed oyster, a slab of marble-textured lung, and the pinkish sea coral of a bronchial tree. He then paused at a skeleton with two titanium hip prosthetics. This reminded Cantor of his own hip implants — “I’ve been meaning to ask my doctor about that hip recall” — and of his years wearing down his cartilage on the hard tennis courts in Israel, where he lives half the year.

It also raised the question of Cantor’s own postmortem dreams. Since he has no children and expects no visitors, he dismissed a traditional burial as a waste of space and decent wood. “I’m leaning toward cremation,” he said, as if considering a color for his office. As described in After We Die, the cremation process takes two to four hours, and would leave about seven pounds of matter, minus his titanium bolts. His “cremains,” as they are known in the business, would be entrusted to his life partner, an Israeli woman who is averse to cremation (according to Cantor, there is one crematorium in Israel), but who has agreed to honor his wishes.

As for what he’d like done with his ashes, Cantor was undecided. There were really so many options. He mentioned a woman who sought to comply with her husband’s wishes by sprinkling his ashes in the sand trap of a beloved golf course (the management refused), though when it was suggested to Cantor that he do something similar on his favorite tennis court, he shook his head. Ashwise, his tastes lay on this side of the foul line. Still, he wouldn’t begrudge others the prerogative. “I would be willing to urge someone to do it in secret,” he said, “if that were truly the wish of the deceased.”
— Paul Hond

Keeping the Fun In Funerals

2010-11-12T11:05:00.001-08:00

Death is typically a somber occasion full of sadness and mourning. Yet funny things can and do happen in the disposal of human remains. While writing my book “After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver,” I came to recognize and appreciate the entertainment value to be found in rites and rituals surrounding disposition of corpses.

Humor is often intentionally injected into memorial proceedings such as a wake or funeral. A cadaver represents the continuing embodiment of a particular human being and that being can be fondly evoked by recalling associated humorous expressions and acts. It is good form in the course of a eulogy to recount humorous anecdotes about the late lamented one. And the celebration of life that is the theme of many memorial services regularly includes reminiscences about funny incidents involving the deceased. Thomas Lynch, a mortician and philosopher, describes the celebration of life phenomenon as capturing the “fun” in funeral and the “good” in goodbye. Humorous remembrance is not incompatible with grief and mourning, but rather an appropriate part of the jumble of emotions accompanying a permanent loss.

Eulogies strongly tend to glorify the departed or at least to focus on whatever positive qualities he or she had. Jessica Mitford wryly commented about the exclusive focus on a decedent’s virtues: “No provision seems to have been made for the burial of a Heartily Disliked One, although the necessity for such must arise in the course of human events.” Sometimes, though, the bitter truth will out, and sometimes that truth is humorous. One widow, marking a forty-year marriage to her departed spouse, remarked: “This is the first night in all those years that I know exactly where he really is!” At another funeral, an incredulous son piped up during the eulogies:

“Quit telling all of these lies. My mother was a mean person and everyone here knows it!”

The wake – a period of hours or days set aside for visitation of the cadaver and its mourning family – can also be an occasion for injection of entertainment and humor. A wake can serve to preserve a lifetime image that the deceased cultivated. When my step-brother, a flamboyant criminal trial lawyer, died at age 39, he left instructions for a New Orleans style wake in Trenton, New Jersey. That meant Dixie-land jazz at the funeral home and mourners dressed in white. In Pittsburgh, an avid football fan dictated that his cadaver be posed at his wake sitting in his favorite rocking chair with a t.v. remote control and beer in hand.

Some subcultures have adopted unusual customs in conducting a wake. Nudists have been known to be laid out naked for viewing, with some of their wake visitors following suit. In 1991, his colleagues gathered to recall and honor the fallen Inka Dink the clown. Inka Dink was laid out in full regalia, including yellow wig, immense red bow tie, red striped stockings, and giant yellow shoes. Many of those who came to pay their respects also wore full clown regalia. In another subculture, Irish wakes were sometimes boisterous affairs, including storytelling, singing, dancing, and card playing (occasionally propping the corpse up in a chair and dealing it in).

The epitaph – an inscription on a stone grave marker – was not commonly a vehicle for humorous expression. Cost of inscription varied by length, so epitaphs were usually terse, like “RIP” (requiescat in pace or rest in peace), “gone to rest,” or “asleep in Jesus.” An epitaph’s message was also usually somber, frequently a reminder of the inevitability of death. Memento mori (remember you must die) was a frequent expression; a spent hourglass drawn on the tombstone often conveyed the same dreary message. Yet even while acknowledging the unavoidability of death, epitaphs sometimes reflected a bemused resignation rather than dread. An example from a Connecticut churchyard:

We must all die, there is no doubt;

Your glass is running – mine is out.

A similar bemusement can be found in ways that members of some trades found to mark their demise. An author’s tombstone read “FINIS” while an artist’s stone read: “here lies a finished artist.” On actress Oldfield’s gravestone, the inscription read:

This we must own in justice to her shade,

Tis the first bad exit Oldfield ever made.

When Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in Looney Tunes cartoons, died in 1989, his tombstone repeated his signature line: “That’s all, folks!”

My favorite epitaphs are those that demonstrate an acute sense of humor on the part of the deceased and/or their descendants. In these instances, perhaps the underlying thought is that a humorous epitaph enhances the chances of perpetuating one’s memory. An example: “Here lies Johnny Yeast; Pardon me for not rising.” Another example is the notation on a grave in a Princeton, New Jersey, cemetery:

“I told you I was sick.” A West Virginia miner left instructions for cremation and composed his epitaph: “I made an ash of myself.” A locally renowned housewife and cook had a recipe carved on her gravestone along with the message “I always said the only way you would get this recipe was over my dead body.”

Epitaphs sometimes reflect an acerbic wit casting the deceased, or his trade, in a derogatory light. An example: “Owen Moore is gone away, Owin’ more than he could pay.” Lawyers have been notorious objects of ironic wit. One example:

See how God works his wonders now and then

Here lies a lawyer and an honest man.

Similarly, lawyer John Strange’s epitaph reads: “Here lies an honest lawyer, and that is Strange.” Yet other trades have also been the object of satiric wit. A San Francisco money lender is memorialized:

Here lies old thirty-five per cent;

The more he made, the more he lent;

The more he got, the more he craved;

The more he made, the more he shaved;

Great God! Can such a soul be saved?

One editor’s tombstone inscription reads:

Here lies an Editor

Snooks if you will;

In mercy Kind Providence

Let him lie still

He lied for his living: so

He lived while he lied

When he could not lie longer

He lied down and died

The putative shrewish wife is sometimes commemorated with acerbic wit. A tombstone in one New England graveyard reads: “Here lies my wife, poor Molly, let her lie, She finds repose at last, and so do I.” Another inscription: “Here lies my poor wife, much lamented; She’s happy and I’m contented.” But some widowers are more vituperative in their epitaphs for departed spouses. In a Rhode Island cemetery:

Here lies wife 2d of old Wing Rogers

She’s safe from cares, and I from bothers;

If death had known thee as well as I

He’d ne’er had stopped, but passed thee by,

I wish him joy, but much I fear

He’ll rue the day he came thee near.

Widows have been known to respond with their own acerbic commentary. When her late husband left the admonition on his grave “As I am now, so you must be; Therefore, prepare to follow me,” the widow added in response: “To follow you I’m not content, Unless I know which way you went.”

The previous examples all reflect purposeful injection of humorous elements into the solemn context of disposal of human remains. Sometimes, inadvertent humor results from mishaps or misjudgments in the disposal of remains. The cremains after cremation can weigh pounds and are not always easy to dispatch. Efforts to scatter ashes at sea can become messy when wind blows the remains back on board. Nor are moving ships the only wind hazard. A New Jersey legislator died after requesting that his cremains be scattered over his beloved Cape Cod Bay. The late legislator’s son, an amateur pilot, decided to fulfill his father’s wish. The son rented a small plane and flew over Cape Cod Bay. At an appropriate moment, he slid open the cockpit cover and turned over the urn—only to have the roaring wind plaster all the cremains against his face and the back of the cockpit -- not exactly what the decedent had in mind when requesting “scattering” over the bay.

Other examples of bad judgment in scattering cremains at beloved places have surfaced in recent years. In May 2002, a widow’s effort to have her husband’s ashes scattered over his favorite team’s baseball park ended badly. The cruising plane caused a terrorism scare and prompted evacuation of the entire stadium. In November 2005, Christopher Noteboom ran onto the playing field during a football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers. Noteboom was attempting to dispose of the cremains of his mother, an avid Eagles fan, in a way that would make her “always a part of Lincoln Field and of the Eagles.” As Noteboom ran, a fine powder trailed from a plastic bag until he dropped to his knees at the thirty-yard line and crossed himself. He was promptly arrested. The arresting officers expressed zero tolerance for someone who runs onto the playing field and dumps an unknown substance in a crowded stadium.

Other surviving relatives have displayed more common sense, as well as humor, in disposing of a loved one’s cremains. A widow sought to scatter her late husband’s ashes in a 6^th hole sand trap where her late husband, an avid golfer, had often stood. When the golf club denied permission for such disposal, the widow stowed the cremains in her own golf bag and covertly raked them into the sand trap. Consider also comedian Steve Allen’s idea of an appropriate placement for a gum manufacturer’s ashes. Allen announced on a 1981 t.v. broadcast: “Morden W. Chicklett, the chewing gum heir, died today. In accordance with his wishes, he will be cremated and his ashes will be stuck to a chair in a nearby restaurant.” Comedian Jerry Seinfeld has humorously derided the whole cremation enterprise, commenting: “It’s kind of like covering up a crime – burn the body, scatter the ashes around. As far as anyone is concerned, the whole thing never happened.”

The point, again, is that humor has an appropriate place even in the solemn context of disposal of human remains. Don’t be too hesitant to keep the fun in funerals! Just do it in a carefully considered manner.

Meet Norman's New Book- After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver

2010-11-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver

Norman L. Cantor

This new book presents more than you thought you ever wanted to know about the handling of human remains. After We Die (AWD) not only chronicles a cadaver’s physical state during various forms of disposal (including possible steps to inhibit bodily decomposition), it also discusses a cadaver’s legal and moral status.

AWD describes who controls the fate of human remains and the applicable legal bounds. Control of a cadaver is explored with regard not only to mode and place of disposition of remains, but also to use of cadaveric body parts in education, research, tissue transplant, and procreation. AWD ascribes enforceable rights to the insentient cadaver, not just to survivors reacting to what is happening to a corpse. AWD also discusses proposals for increasing cadaveric organ supplies including a presumed consent regime for obtaining body parts critically needed for transplant.

As to moral standing of cadavers, AWD analyses the “quasi-human” status attributed to remains and the protections therefore accorded to cadavers. The book reflects on the limits that “post-mortem human dignity” poses on disposal choices by either a decedent or an agent entitled to make final dispositions. Is it intrinsically disrespectful to exploit human remains in public educational displays, in artistic settings, or for utilitarian purposes as in furniture or clothes?

To order this book, click here and for a 30% discount use code Y28 at checkout. Or use Amazon or B & N.

Death and Dying: The Sequel

2010-03-09T08:07:00.000-08:00

I always knew I was a sick man. I just wasn’t sure how to define the malady. Was it urangst – a primal fear of death? Or was it a milder syndrome described by Stephen Holden as “upper middle class angst as old age and death loom, and there is suddenly too much time to fill”?

The main symptom – a preternatural absorption with the process of dying – appeared decades ago. Since 1973, I have been immersed in scholarship about the legal aspects of death and dying. The object was to outline the best methodology – in both practical and legal terms – for dying with a modicum of dignity. The product was dozens of articles in medical and legal journals and 3 books featuring titles like “Advance Directives and the Pursuit of Death with Dignity.” By 2005, when I retired from law teaching, I had pretty much said all I cared to about end-of-life decisionmaking – the range of options open to dying medical patients and their families.

Then a new vista opened. I realized that there’s a natural segue between absorption in the dying process and preoccupation with people’s post-mortem fate – the disposition of human remains. Raw emotions, sharp disputes, and legal uncertainties are just as ripe and just as gripping in the post-mortem as pre-mortem context. This revelation was spurred by an episode involving the remains of baseball great Ted Williams. After Williams died in 2002, his daughter sought to fulfill his 1996 will dictating that his remains be cremated and his ashes scattered over the Florida Keys where he had spent many happy times fishing. Ted’s son wanted to have his father’s corpse frozen and transferred to a cryonic storage facility in Arizona so it would be ready for restoration whenever science might master the technique of revivifying dead human beings. The son contended that his father had, while hospitalized, changed his mind about cremation.

Many things about the story of Ted Williams’ remains caught my attention. From a legal perspective, which of the several interested parties really controlled the disposition of the corpse? The executor responsible for implementing the will? The son who believed that his father wanted to be frozen? The daughter who believed that her father wanted to be cremated as stated in his will? And even if someone could reliably discern Ted Williams’ wishes, would those wishes be binding on the responsible parties? What if Ted Williams had indeed wanted cryonic disposition, but his descendants believed that such a disposition was a futile waste of money, or sacrilegious, or overly burdensome, or just plain undignified? Would the responsible parties still be bound to implement his wishes? In short, I wondered about the legal principles governing disposition of a human corpse, especially the question of self-determination concerning one’s earthly remains. Can a corpse have legal rights? Is a corpse legally entitled to have prior instructions carried out? Or do the descendants of the deceased have their own right to govern disposition of the human remains?

Thus was born the sequel to Death and Dying. For the next several years, I researched my current manuscript “After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver.” This meant learning not just who legally controls the fate of a corpse, but also what range of dispositions is available for human remains. I examined what physical consequences accompany each means of disposal, including sepulcher, cremation, cryonic freezing, or mummification. Some people believe that the physical fate of human remains is irrelevant to a now-dead person, so they are indifferent about post-mortem bodily transformations. I am not one of them. Somehow it matters to me whether a buried corpse retains its shape and form or is transformed into a moldy, shapeless, shrunken mass. I wanted to know whether corporeal disintegration is inevitable and at what pace it occurs. I learned that a typical buried cadaver will deteriorate to a blackened hulk within two decades, and to a moldy skeleton within forty years.

One lesson of “After We Die” is that advance planning can be useful in the post-mortem context. A deceased’s wishes usually govern the fate of their corpse. (Once it was demonstrated that Ted Williams had indeed expressed a late wish for cryonic preservation, his corpse was transferred to Arizona to become a corpsicle). It behooves a person to articulate his or her preferences for post-mortem disposal. One’s conception of post-mortem dignity may diverge from that of one’s survivors. Or survivors may differ among themselves in projecting what the deceased’s wishes would have been if they had only been expressed. And if beneficence toward fellow humans is one of your inclinations, you might well consider, in formulating instructions, the continuing roles available to the human cadaver as teacher (anatomy lab), scientific research subject, and supplier of used body parts.

Your good deeds can continue after you die. Donation of cadaveric tissue benefits the needy recipient, prolongs the physical presence of the deceased, and adds a poignant memory about the late lamented one’s generosity. Also, dissection of cadavers continues to serve as an important element of medical education. A Boston University medical student recently expressed her gratitude to the body donor whose corpse provided a critical introduction to the wonders of human anatomy. She labeled the donation “an exponential gift from one man to eight future doctors to hundreds of patients.” Likewise, researchers in both academia and industry need cadavers or parts to help expand medical knowledge about bodily afflictions and cures as well as safety products. Post-mortem examination of the body’s interior sometimes provides insights unavailable from live research subjects – as with brain research regarding dementia or the effects of concussive trauma.

The good news, then, is that a live person is entitled to shape their corpse’s fate in many constructive ways. Post-mortem human dignity imposes only a few constraints. For example, don’t try to extend your sexuality beyond your lifetime because necrophilia is an intrinsic violation of post-mortem human dignity even when based on consent.

The bad news is that a corpse has extremely limited capacity to enforce its predecessor’s instructions. Implementation of controversial wishes for cadaver disposal may depend on survivors’ willingness to overcome any qualms about the indignity or distaste of a chosen course. It might help the implementation of disposal wishes if the probable survivors are alerted to any unconventional or controversial plans and their cooperation enlisted. In November 2009, an 80 year-old Israeli, in failing health, sought a judicial declaration upholding his request to have his corpse thrown to wild animal scavengers on the Golan Heights. The Israeli court rejected the petition, ruling that such disposal would constitute an intolerable offense to human dignity. The result is not surprising given the religiously influenced cultural norms that prevail in Israel. Putting aside practical objections like unsightly debris of skeletonized remains, the question remains whether a decedent’s wish to become fodder for wild animals really represents a debasement violative of post-mortem human dignity. Is this route any more degrading than burial at sea to become food for the fishes? Instead of turning to a court, wouldn’t the Israeli man have been better off soliciting advance cooperation from likely survivors?

All this background about “After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver” is just to whet your appetite. Don’t bother yet to look for it on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. According to publisher Georgetown University Press, publication is scheduled for Fall 2010. I will be happy to provide a timely reminder.

- Norman L. Cantor

No Peace from the Jewish Voice for Peace

2009-12-15T11:22:00.001-08:00

A couple of months ago, I signed up for the newsletter of the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). As a half-time resident of Tel Aviv, I desperately want peace in the Middle East. And I subscribe to the JVP’s stated yearning for security, justice, and peace for both Israelis and Palestinians. Moreover, I too see the extensive Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the harsh treatment of its Palestinian residents (via checkpoints and barrier walls) as significant obstacles to peace. So I figured that I and JVP have enough shared perspective to warrant my interest.

At the same time, I have always perceived some obstacles to peace posed by the Arab or Palestinian side. Arab rejectionism of peace has been a long-time factor -- starting in the 1948 war, reaching a crescendo in 1967 with the Arab League’s 3 no’s (“no” to recognition, “no” to negotiation, and “no” to peace), continuing through the Yom Kippur war of 1973, and extending to Arafat’s rejection of an offer of a Palestinian state at Camp David in 2000 and the P.A.’s rejection of Ehud Olmert’s peace proposal in 2008. The annihilationist determination of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and others has also struck me as a threat to peace in the Middle East. When Israel left Gaza and Southern Lebanon, the opening was quickly seized to rain rockets onto civilian targets in Southern Israel and Kiryat Shmona; today, Iran supplies even longer-range, more powerful missiles for those annihilationists to pursue their goal. (My Tel Aviv apartment is now within their range, to say nothing of Iran’s nuclear threat). Hamas, dedicated both to destruction of Israel and to radical fundamentalism on every inch of Palestine, somehow looms in my mind as an obstruction to peace. Its violent seizure of control of Gaza in the summer of 2007, its cross-border launching of over 10,000 warheads, its fundamentalist incitement in Gaza mosques and schools, and its repression of all dissent seems to me to bode ill for Palestinian commitment to peaceful co-existence. I don’t know the degree of Hamas influence on the West Bank, but its control of Gaza and its potential role in a Palestinian state are real concerns within a peace process.

In short, I hoped that JVP, in its stated dedication to a just peace, might address the spectrum of concerns confronting the peace process. What I have confronted instead in the dispatches from JVP is a barrage of shrill, one-sided condemnation of anything and everything about the State of Israel.

JVP appears to uncritically accept and endorse every negative portrayal of Israel. An example is a November 9, 2009, posting by Rela Mazali featuring a letter from an Israeli Arab university student group urging a Norwegian university to boycott Israeli academic institutions. The students assert that Israeli universities suppress free expression, in particular by harassing any lecturer dissenting from “official ideology.” I know enough about Israeli universities (having spent 6 years on the faculty at Tel Aviv University) to know that academic freedom is quite robust in Israel. Indeed, Israeli academia includes numerous figures, like Neve Gordon at Ben Gurion University, who regularly disseminate decidedly unorthodox views on government policy. The very existence of dissident student groups and their freedom to publicly chastise their universities, as in the letter in question, tends to refute the claim of suppression of academic freedom. JVP, though, expresses no doubt or question about the students’ accusations.

Another JVP tenet is unquestioning acceptance of the Goldstone report as gospel truth. A November 10 post from Lincoln Shlensky adopts the Goldstone perspective that the Gaza operation of January 2009 was an unprovoked assault (rather than an effort to protect 300,000 Israeli civilians from the 80 to 100 warheads per day then raining down on them). You don’t have to be a legal scholar (though I was) to recognize the distortions and inadequacies apparent in the Goldstone report. That report exhibits shameful myopia in its exclusive reliance on Gazan sources thoroughly intimidated by Hamas and its glib dismissal of contemporary press reports contradicting witness assertions. (Of course, Israel didn’t help matters by its stupid refusal to cooperate with the Goldstone mission). The portrayal of Operation Cast Lead as a purely gratuitous assault amazes and antagonizes the vast majority of Israelis who applauded the IDF effort to end the regular cross-border rocket barrage. Indeed, the recent eclipse of the peace movement within Israel is in part due to widespread recognition that the tactics of both Hamas and Hezbollah warranted a military response.

A group that wants to promote a just peace has to understand the needs and perspectives of both sides. Bias can be expressed by exclusive focus on the asserted misdeeds of one side to a dispute. JVP almost gloatingly trumpets the sad Israeli phenomena of disproportionate funding of orthodox Jewish schools and yeshivas as well as the disadvantages of non-orthodox residents from orthodox religious regulation of marriage, divorce, and conversion. (Nov. 9). Hello!!!!??? Secular and non-orthodox Jews are well aware of those phenomena and struggle (through democratic channels) to correct the injustices involved. Parallel struggles go on as to infrastructure discrimination against the Arab sector. These flaws in Israel’s operation are well known and warrant the democratic struggle. But JVP utters nary a word about Hamas’ promotion of Sharia, Hamas’ violent suppression of any dissent, and constant inculcation of religious hatred. Not a whisper about the systematic abuse of Christian Palestinians by fundamentalist Moslems. JVP’s tunnel vision is blind to the rockets and missiles being smuggled into annihilationist hands.

The bottom line is that JVP’s tone of unrelenting hostility distressingly echoes the daily anti-zionist polemic seeking to delegitimize Israel. JVP does nothing to promote Israeli acceptance of a 2-state solution to the Middle East conflict when it ignores the legitimate security concerns of Israel’s population. I’m not sure which is more depressing – the image of Jewish settlers pouring their talents and energies into Judah and Samaria rather than the Negev and the Galilee, or the image of bright Jewish observers (such as JVP) spouting derision of Israel. Neither of these forces is advancing a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

- Norman L. Cantor

Absorbing the Blows

2009-09-29T07:13:00.001-07:00

Sept. 28, 2009

Getting back to Israel after 6 months feels somewhat like being placed in a transparent punching bag. The blows are coming from both the Left and the Right, fast and furious. But while the puncher is sometimes visible and you can see the blow coming, it still wrenches the gut as it lands.

Start with the Goldstone Report suggesting that Israel was guilty of war crimes in the Gaza Operation of January 2009. Richard Goldstone, for all his good intentions, has served as a dupe of anti-zionist forces bent on delegitimizing and destroying Israel. The so-called objective report is shamefully one-sided in adopting a Hamas perspective on all history and events. It is shockingly myopic in its reliance on Gazan sources which are thoroughly intimidated by Hamas and able only to parrot the party line dictated by Hamas. Even when the report is aware of contemporaneous news reports quoting Palestinians verifying Hamas warfare provoking Israeli response, the report chooses to dismiss that possibility. The report makes outrageous accusations about “deliberate” killing of civilians. At the same time, there are enough events described to realize that some serious misdeeds probably did occur in Gaza despite Israel’s military’s overall effort to spare civilian casualties. Israel’s zeal to punish Hamas’ terrorism against Israelis led to some excesses, some of which warrant punishment. That is not a happy realization. But Israel continues to investigate and, where appropriate, should punish perpetrators. In the meantime, the myopic Goldstone report serves mainly as ammunition for anti-zionist efforts to entirely delegitimize the State of Israel.

Then, consider the op-ed piece recently published in both Los Angeles and London by a political science professor at Ben Gurion University in Be’ersheva. Professor Neve Gordon is so upset by Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank that he calls on the rest of the world to boycott and “suspend cooperation with Israel.” He sees this as the only way to bring Israel to its senses and accept what he apparently sees as an outstretched Palestinian hand of peace. Forget for a moment that Neve Gordon’s perspective is so distorted that he sees the years of Hamas rockets and escalation of launches in December 2008 as a mere “protest” against Gaza’s economic isolation by Israel and Egypt (as opposed to terroristic belligerence by an entity, Hamas, whose predominant object is the total destruction of Israel). Didn’t Professor Gordon consider that his call would, as it did, infuriate contributors and undermine the future of Ben Gurion University – an institution serving the well being not just of Gordon and fellow faculty, but of 25,000 students of various ethnic backgrounds?

Ben Gurion University’s administration is reacting by wringing its hands in frustration, deploring Professor Gordon’s call for a boycott but claiming it cannot sanction Neve Gordon because he is tenured. Tenure does guarantee freedom of thought and speech to academics in their work. However, tenure doesn’t provide absolute immunity from misbehavior; tenured academics can be punished for “good cause” shown. In Professor Gordon’s case, he has ostensibly done at least 2 things that interfere with the academic freedom of others – two acts which warrant investigation of whether they constitute “good cause.” Gordon forum-shopped and sued for libel a fellow Israeli academic who had noted the association between Gordon’s writing and the writing of Holocaust deniers. That law suit, in its effort to suppress what was clearly protected opinion by a fellow academic, was itself arguably a violation of academic freedom. And surely Neve Gordon is jeopardizing and undermining the academic freedom of his colleagues in every Israeli university by seeking an end to cooperation with Israeli institutions. Israeli academics utilize and depend on their interactions with others in the academic world.

The blows from the right are just as discouraging. This weekend’s Yediot Ahronoth does an expose of some extremist settlers in the West Bank, documenting their determination to continue unlawful activities aimed at distracting and harassing the Israeli army, as well as their deliberate provocations and repression of the surrounding Arab population. All this is a sickening reminder of the difficulty of eventually extracting masses of settlers in order to reach a 2-state solution. Without such a solution, Israel would ultimately have to either expel innocent Arab residents or treat them as second class in a manner inconsistent with Israel’s own declaration of independence and governing principles. In the same vein of discouraging blows from the right, Yediot’s Yair Lapid (not a rightist himself) reminds us how many billions of shekels have been diverted to by-pass roads and other measures to defend the settlers. These are resources that could have been used to develop the Negev and the Galilee in a way far more conducive to Israel’s long-range well being than being stuck in the West Bank. It is incredibly sad to see the pioneer spirit and energy of the young settlers being spilled into the West Bank rather than the Negev or Galilee.

Another continuing blow is the adherence of right-wing religious parties to anti-democratic agendas like discrimination against non-orthodox Jews (in marriage, divorce, and conversion) and discrimination against Arabs (in housing). (But the matter of the right wing’s betrayal of Israel’s founding principles is reserved for a later dispatch).

On the brighter side, 75 year-old Leonard Cohen gave a wonderful concert on September 24 to a sold-out stadium in Ramat Gan. The enthralled crowd was swept with enthusiasm and Cohen responded with intensity for over 2 and ½ hours. Of course, a stain on this happy event came from the ideologues of the Palestinian Campaign for the Artistic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – the activist group that torpedoed Cohen’s effort to spread his concern and good will to a Palestinian audience in Ramallah. These ideologues forced cancellation of Cohen’s scheduled appearance in Ramallah on the ground that any acknowledgement of a positive Israeli side would be legitimizing the totally evil Zionist entity.

This is the same kind of unadulterated enmity that prompted a claque of entertainment figures to condemn the Toronto International Film Festival’s effort to honor Israel’s film industry. The claque’s effort at suppression of Israeli artists curbs the very talented Israelis (Arab and Jewish alike) who often portray the suffering of both sides in the Holy Land conflict and promote a message of reconciliation. (If you didn’t see Waltz with Bashir, you should have! And on September 26, a primarily Arabic-language film, Ajeemi, co-directed by an Israeli Arab and an Israeli Jew, won best film at Israel’s Oscar awards). The claque of ideologues took no prisoners and missed no distortions in their efforts to portray Israel as pure pariah. Their admonition that Tel Aviv was built on the ruins of Arab villages is illustrative. That assertion was shocking on two counts – first because it is patently false and second because it implies the illegitimacy of Tel Aviv, the heart of Israel.

If this dispatch makes me sound a little woozy, you’ll have to understand. All these punches have been absorbed in the scant 10 days since getting back. And they don’t include the stoning directed by Palestinians against Jews on the Temple Mount yesterday or the rocket squad liquidated in Gaza 2 days ago while transporting missiles for launching into Israel. Hopefully, by the time of my next dispatch, I will have recovered my equilibrium.

- Norman L. Cantor

The Great Disconect

2009-03-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

In the New York Times of January 25, 2009, journalist Ethan Bronner describes vastly divergent narratives of anti-Zionists and defenders of Israel. The anti-Zionist construct is that Israel is a neo-colonialist aggressor uninterested in peace (Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and Israel’s unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza to the contrary notwithstanding). From my observation point in Tel Aviv, I get to witness all too clearly the great disconnect between anti-Zionist rhetoric and reality. I get to see Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas striving to destroy Israel with missiles getting closer and closer to my balcony.

Along with the neo-colonialist myth, the anti-Zionists have invented new definitions of human rights as we once knew them. Here are a couple of examples.

National Self Defense
We know that Hamas fired more than 8,000 rockets and mortars at civilians in Israel, increasing the rate to 80 per day as of December 21, 2008. Even the anti-Zionists concede that Israel has a right to self defense. But they define it in a peculiar fashion.
According to the anti-Zionists, efforts to eliminate hostile assaults must be carefully calibrated in terms of weaponry and casualties – at least if the people ultimately being protected are disfavored Zionist Jews. Jet planes, even if precision targeted, are grossly unfair. Casualty rates cannot be too unbalanced, and a 10 to 1 ratio is improper. However, when the civilian victims being protected against hostile assault were Muslims, as in the Balkans in 1999, none of this mattered. When NATO forces were using high-altitude bombing to protect Muslims, and when civilian Serbian casualties were 3 times as great as military casualties, not a single suggestion of disproportionate force was heard. Hamas’ dedication to the destruction of Israel by any means possible doesn’t matter to anti-Zionists in assessing proportionality. Never mind that Hamas’ version of self defense features liquidating civilians and leaving as many Jewish bodies as possible plastered to the walls of pizzerias and other gathering places.

Freedom of Expression
Democracy depends on diversity of views. Anti-Zionists relish free speech – so long as it supports their own doctrinaire positions. Hamas in Gaza provides some examples. Hamas is all for a free press reporting Israeli aggression. But if a Gazan wants to report Hamas atrocities – e.g., firing missiles from civilian-crowded areas – that person is subject to liquidation. When a N.Y. Times reporter witnessed a summary civilian execution by Hamas fighters in a Gazan hospital, she was immediately subject to threats. Every foreign correspondent in Gaza is well aware of Hamas’ intimidation.

Gazan leaders now want to bar the BBC from Gaza because, they say, the BBC is too biased. They’ve got that wrong. The BBC is biased, all right, which is why I’m fond of calling them the unofficial propaganda wing of Hamas. But in the topsy-turvy lexicon of anti-Zionists, free speech means “unbiased” only in the sense of uninhibitedly supporting the orthodox view. In other words, the BBC is not biased enough in favor of Hamas to enjoy free speech in Gaza.

Another, more peripheral example of anti-Zionist freedom of expression comes out of Malmo, Sweden. On January 25, 2009, a couple of hundred Swedes got a permit and held a pro-Israel demonstration. This was an orderly demonstration featuring songs like Hinai Ma Tov. Suddenly, pro-Hamas counter-demonstrators started hurling rocks and bottles at the pro-Israel demonstrators. Swedish police promptly dispersed the pro-Israel demonstration. (For the incredulous, it’s on You Tube). You don’t have to be a former constitutional law professor to know that this is the antithesis of freedom of expression. Both U.S. Supreme Court precedent and Israeli Supreme Court precedent establish that freedom of expression entails protection of demonstrators regardless of their point of view. Try telling that to Hamas or Hezbollah or any other anti-Zionist advocate of “free speech.” Or perhaps get busy learning the new anti-Zionist lexicon of human rights.

Playing Tennis and Politics at the Same Time

2009-03-13T13:23:00.001-07:00

Tears of joy are infrequently seen at Israeli appearances in international sports competitions. But yesterday the tears spilled freely from the members of the Israeli Davis Cup tennis squad after the team upset Sweden, 3 matches to 2, to advance to the quarter-finals of this year’s international Davis Cup competition. After Harel Levy won the deciding match 8 to 6 in the fifth set, the winning squad wildly celebrated as though they had won the Davis Cup outright rather than just the prospect of meeting a very strong Russian squad in the next round. The Swedish loser in the final match, Andreas Vinciguerra, hurled his racquet into the (empty) stands and stalked off the court in frustration.
Why all this emotional upheaval around a tennis match between two mediocre teams like Sweden and Israel? Neither squad had a player ranked in the top 50 in the world. Amir Hadad, one of the Israeli doubles players, is ranked 331 in the world. Vinciguerra, the #2 player for Sweden, hadn’t played world class tennis since October of 2006. Ordinarily, this match would produce yawns even from the most avid tennis fans in each country.
The key to the furor was that Sweden turned this piddling tennis match into an international cause célèbre. Palestinian supporters in Sweden had urged that the entire match be canceled. Leaders in the host city of Malmo responded by barring spectators from the Davis Cup matches in the 4,000 seat Baltic Hall arena. (This is the same city that weeks ago broke up a peaceful pro-Israel rally after pro-Palestinian counter-demonstrators began throwing stones).

The stated rationale for barring spectators was that Malmo could not guarantee security in the arena. But the local public safety director had said that security could in fact be handled for the arena and Israeli basketball teams have played before hostile audiences in Spain and Greece without serious incident. The intended insult to the visiting country was patent. Israeli tennis players were being told, in effect: “you are invited to participate in this cultural event, but your appearance will be closed to the public. Your nation is too repulsive to warrant better treatment.” Beyond the intended insult of the empty stands, a further element of extreme hostility faced the Israeli players. Thousands of Palestinian supporters, still upset that the match had not been cancelled entirely, demonstrated and rioted right outside the Malmo arena on the first 2 match days. They screamed their anti-Israel vitriol. Some masked demonstrators threw rocks and paving stones at the police. Some demonstrators tried to storm the arena gates.

In the face of all this hostility and insult, the Israeli players, not surprisingly, felt a strong emotional surge. They desperately wanted to salvage national pride by beating the ungracious hosts. Every one of the five matches became a titanic struggle. All four singles matches went to the fifth set. Players on both teams spilled their guts trying for every ball and every advantage. The level of tennis was only moderate, but then again every player on both squads was obviously feeling the weight of emotion generated by the atmosphere surrounding the competition. It isn’t easy to play top-level tennis while carrying a national flag in one hand; serving becomes especially problematic.

Despite the pressure, the Israeli players ultimately exploited their motivation and hung on for the overall victory. Dudi Sela, Israel’s #1 player, won two incredible five-set matches, the last against the wily veteran Thomas Johanson.

After Harel Levy’s last winning shot, the Israeli squad paraded around the near-empty arena waving a giant Israeli flag. Their pride in their nation and in themselves was palpable. The tears of joy spilled out. The Israeli television commentator shouted: “There is a God.” I don’t know about divine intervention, but what I see, in the wake of this tennis event, is a speck of justice in the world. In their zeal to bash and delegitimate Israel, the Malmo hosts shot themselves and the Swedish players in the foot. For if the arena had been filled with supportive Swedish fans, the Swedish squad would probably have prevailed. The hostile Malmo hosts engineered Israel’s advance to the round of 8 for the first time in 22 years. And they engineered the Swedish Davis Cup squad’s first loss ever after leading by a 2-1 margin after 2 days.

This Purim I’m dressing up as either Harel Levi or Dudi Sela. They’re my super-heroes.

- Norman L. Cantor

Israel's Turn Inward in its 2009 Elections

2009-03-13T13:22:00.001-07:00

The rightward drift visible in Israel’s latest election results is doubtless attributable to numerous factors including force (or lack of force) of personalities and changing demographics. From a perspective of the last several years, though, a few key influences are apparent. Whether you sympathize with the Israeli population’s perceptions of events or not, here are several of the most important perspectives.

Anxiety about Long-term Survival

Israelis see constantly increasing existential threats. Iran’s advances in missile technology keep in lock step with Iran’s strident rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Iran vigorously upgrades and replenishes the weapons available to its surrogates Hamas and Hezbollah, both perched on Israel’s borders and equally dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Each generation of rockets extends the Iranian reach to a higher percentage of the Israeli population.

It would only take one nuclear strike to devastate Israel’s highly concentrated population. It is not reassuring that Israel has its own atomic weaponry, nor that part of Europe might also feel threatened by Iran’s weaponry. Nor is it any reassurance that an Iranian atomic strike would kill tens of thousands of Muslims along with Jews. Logic does not seem to constrain lethal events in the Middle East. Recall the hundreds and hundreds of thousands who died in the struggle between Iran and Iraq. That carnage had far less justification than the Jihadists have found in their current demonization of Israel

Given this perceived, looming threat to Israel’s existence, it’s not surprising that the Israeli electorate moved in the direction of those in Israeli politics taking the Iranian threat most seriously.

Frustration from Making Concessions without Peace or Security

The formula of land for peace motivated then Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s 2000 offer to Yasir Arafat of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem on almost all of pre-1967 Palestinian territory. The Palestinians then spit on the extended hand. In the wake of rejection of that offer, over a thousand Israelis have died – the bulk of them civilians blown to bits in buses and public places.

From the perspective of Israel’s political center, Israel similarly pursued peace in Gaza (and Lebanon) only to see its efforts boomerang into hostilities. Israel unilaterally ousted thousands of settlers and withdrew from Gaza. Hamas promptly utilized that vacuum by violently wrenching control from Fatah (killing hundreds of Fatah activists) and launching thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers. (Don’t buy the Hamas myth that Israel itself provoked the rockets by closing down passages into Gaza; the Hamas bombardments preceded and provoked Israeli manipulation of the crossings). In short, the unilateral Israeli withdrawals (strongly supported by, if not engineered by, the left) have left public skepticism in their wake.

Resentment Against Moral Myopia

After years of ad-hoc responses to the cross-border bombardments, Israel in December 2008 sent military forces into Gaza in an effort to uproot and destroy the Hamas structure responsible for the years of terror directed at Israel’s civilian population. Moral outrage followed in the world press as though the Gaza operation was unprovoked or unfocused on permanently ending the Hamas attacks. Hamas’ pre-war atrocities were ostensibly ignored as were their wartime tactics of using civilian structures and human shields. Accusations of war crimes flowed after Israeli forces, seeking out all sources of rocket attacks, destroyed thousands of civilian-owned structures used and often booby-trapped by Hamas’ soldiers

These international responses over the last 2 months have caused severe moral whiplash to Israelis. The majority of Israelis have been startled and appalled by what they perceive as international indifference or hostility to their acutely felt security needs.

At the same time, the Israeli left showed little appreciation of the justifications for the use of force in Gaza. For example, left-wing Meretz (a party now reduced to 3 seats in the 120 member Knesset) wanted to end hostilities after 3 days – long before Israeli forces had attained their legitimate objectives. Part of the reason why a portion of the Israeli left migrated toward Tzipi Livni was her firm grasp of the reasons for force and the objectives of force in Gaza. (Note that after militarily crushing Hamas in Gaza, Israel is likely to enjoy at least a one and one-half year respite from Hamas’ bombardment, along with an increased chance of cutting the Iranian arms flow to Gaza).

Resentment toward Israeli Arabs’ pan-Arab Sympathies
         Arab-Israelis have every right to be politically restive. Their abstract rights to full citizenship have not translated into equal status in the social, economic, and political spheres in Israel. They face plenty of hardship and frustration domestically, and they empathize strongly with suffering of their brethren in Gaza and the West Bank.
         All that emotion had, and still has, the potential to propel Arab-Israelis to struggle within the democratic framework that gives every Israeli citizen an equal vote. Based on recent history, though, Arab-Israelis have cast their ballots with rejectionist parties that do not want Israel to survive as a democratic state. These rejectionist parties showed little or no sympathy with the plight of 300,000 Israeli fellow-citizens subjected to bombardment over the course of years. These parties tended to portray the Gaza operation as unprovoked, unrestrained violence. These Arab-Israeli political parties have also recoiled from the idea of national civilian service as though they were being conscripted to spread the bubonic plague rather than promote the national welfare.
          Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party attracted many thousands of votes by their efforts to associate these separatist party positions with disloyalty to the multi-cultural, democratic state of Israel. At the same time, Arab-Israelis now have a golden opportunity to correct the temporary tilt in Israeli politics simply by exercising their potential political muscle in a positive way. Arab-Israelis can continue their legitimate struggle for full equality in Israel by pursuing mainstream representation to advance that struggle. I know a couple of parties (Labor and Meretz) that could really use that infusion of energy and purpose.

Duration of the Tilt

A multiplicity of factors determine Israel’s political fate. The leanings of Israel’s political center, though, will most immediately depend on whether the potential peacemakers – especially Presidents Obama and Sarkozy – are sufficiently responsive to the reality that Israel cannot make peace with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran lurking at Israel’s borders and smacking their collective, bloodthirsty lips

- Norman L. Cantor

The Favorite Shibboleths of Israel’s So-called Well-wishers

2009-03-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

Norman L. Cantor

Okay, I’ve had it! I’ve had my fill of the pontifications of people who sit comfortably in their secure digs in New York or London or Paris and ignore Middle East reality while telling Israel, “for its own good,” how to act. I had grown accustomed to the BBC’s egregious moral myopia; after all, for years they’ve unabashedly served as the propaganda wing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This weekend, though, Roger Cohen and Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times and Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post wheeled out all the tired clichés of Israel’s alarmed “supporters.” I can’t take it anymore! Here are my favorite shibboleths, with short dissections of each.

Israel is Entitled to Defend Its People, but It Has Responded Disproportionately

Both Times writers point out that only 20 Israeli civilians have been killed by Hamas rockets over the years. All this Gaza violence over 20 deaths!!

Well, how about the 200,000 civilian residents of Southern Israel targeted and traumatized by 8,000 rockets and missiles over those years? (Make that 800,000 residents with the recent addition of Ashdod and Be’er Sheva to missile range). It’s not that Hamas hasn’t been trying to kill and maim Israeli children; to Hamas’ eternal frustration, the numerous shattered classrooms were vacant. The targeted, traumatized children have been huddling in shelters and internal stairwells or have been uprooted and shipped to more distant locales.

Consider some other “disproportionate” Israeli defense measures. The Israelis destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor before he had a chance to develop a single atomic warhead. The world howled in moral outrage. Likewise with Hafaz Assad’s unfinished atomic installation in Syria in 2008. In 1967, Israel attacked Egypt in a (gasp!) preventive war just because Egyptian forces were massing with the declared object of destroying Israel. And the Israelis went and destroyed the entire Egyptian air force, not just those planes that were being armed for sorties into Israel. Excessive force?

Israel’s Violent Action Entrenches Arab Hatred

Well, no question that Arab rage is being triggered. The mosques in Arab states are bubbling with bitter condemnations of the Jews – the “monkeys and pigs” responsible for the deaths of prophets and for most evil in the world. I would be pretty enraged, too, if all I saw were Al Jazeera’s images of dead and bleeding civilians (without any coverage of the years of Hamas’ attacks on civilians and without any images of the hundreds of missiles raining down throughout southern Israel).

Somehow, though, I can’t attribute all this hatred to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Since 1948, Israel has been treated by the bulk of the Arab world as a hated cancer to be destroyed by any means. The Egyptian fedayeen started terrorism against Israel in the 1950’s by infiltrating (from Gaza) and attacking kibbutzim. The PLO charter vowing to destroy Israel dated to 1964, before a single Israeli set foot in either Gaza or the West Bank. For all 60 years of Israel’s existence, the Middle East mosques have been ringing with fierce tirades and threats against the Jews. Palestinian schoolbooks have for decades demonized the Jews as sub-humans fit only to be killed. Hamas’ suicide bombers had blown 400 Israelis to bits long before Hamas got angry about the current Gaza operation. Ahmadinejad didn’t need any invasion of Gaza to pronounce Iran’s hate and intention to liquidate Israel. So pardon me if I’m not any more alarmed now about Arab hatred than I was before the Gaza operation began.

Military Force Cannot Solve Israel’s Probems, Only Bolster Hamas and Hezbollah

Israel’s sanctimonious well-wishers say that only a negotiated settlement can end the longstanding conflict between Israel and Palestinians. Every image of Palestinian casualties, they say, just brings more shaheeds to the suicide bomber recruiting offices.

Duh!! Israel understands the long-range need for a political resolution. But when terrorist Hezbollah was shooting rockets from Lebanon into Kiryat Shmona in the north, there was zero chance of a political solution. After a painful campaign, Israel pushed Hezbollah away from Northern Israel and got international observers into the area. For some period at least, Israel’s northern residents will be not be daily missile targets. In Gaza, Hamas had zero interest in a negotiated end to its terrorist missile attacks on civilians. On December 21, 2007, despite desperate warnings from Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, and despite express Israeli willingness to keep passages to Gaza open, Hamas rejected a continuation of the so-called cease fire and increased its launches to 50 to 80 per day. Israel was left with no choice but to protect its Southern residents. And Israel today has no way to protect those citizens other than by ensuring that Hamas cannot be resupplied with Iranian missiles. Without prevention of missile smuggling into Gaza, the Gaza violence will only recur and escalate – with Iranian-supplied rocketry soon to reach Tel Aviv and a theater near me. So pardon me again if I see the daily terrorist rocket launchings as a more immediate concern than the possibility of Hamas gaining more fanatical converts.

The Israeli Army Cruelly Ignores Civilian Interests

Use self-defense, our morally upset well-wishers urge, but the bodies of 200 Palestinian children speak for themselves. They testify to utter Israeli disregard for innocent human life.

Yes, and no. Intentional targeting of civilians is indeed atrocious; that's what Hamas has been doing for decades. Yes, the Israeli bombing of the U.N. school was a reckless, and deplorable act that needlessly killed civilians. That action deserves condemnation. Though it is true that a Hamas mortar squad had just fired from the façade of the U.N. school building, the ensuing destruction of the populated building was unwarranted. Hamas’ intentional illegal use of civilian shields notwithstanding, the Israeli conduct in that instance seems unjustifiable.

No, the Israeli army is not indifferent to civilian lives. American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan confirms that even a highly moral army striving to minimize civilian casualties cannot avoid them. The Israeli army does strive to avoid civilian casualties. Intelligence data about every potential aerial target is screened and targets disqualified when risk to civilians is excessive. Palestinian-generated casualty figures do not accurately distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters. Hamas’ 16,000 soldiers have long discarded their black uniforms in an effort to blend in with civilians. The assertions about Gaza are reminiscent of the reported “carnage” in Jenin in the West Bank during the 2d Intifada in 2002. Palestinians and international sources screamed that Israeli troops were sweeping through the Palestinian camp just mowing down civilians. They proclaimed that the death toll was between 500 and 3,000 Palestinians. The truth, as later confirmed by a Time Magazine investigation, was that Israeli forces had advanced house to house in order to avoid civilian casualties and at a cost of a number of Israeli soldiers’ lives. The actual number of Palestinian deaths in Jenin was 56.

The Jenin phenomenon of gross distortion of fact is surely taking place in Gaza now. On Thursday, an Arab truck driver in a humanitarian relief convoy was shot as the empty truck approached the Erez crossing leaving Israel. U.N. aid officials in Gaza promptly blamed Israeli tank fire and suspended the humanitarian shipments. It now appears that the malefactors were Hamas snipers.

An instinctive reaction to the bombing of mosques is horror and upset. What a gross violation of civilian interests! Except that the mosques hit in Gaza all had weapons storehouses and/or tunnel networks. The photos show the secondary explosions of the arms caches. Even Hamas does not have the chutzpah to deny the military employment of these “houses of worship."

My Bottom Line

Israel has made plenty of errors over the years deserving of criticism. (Don’t start me on the settlements in Hevron and some other parts of the West Bank! Or on ill-considered treatment of Israeli Arabs!) Just spare me the sanctimonious, morally myopic, reality-distorting preaching of our “friends” and “well-wishers” who think they know and care more about Israeli security than those under fire.