January 16, 2024. The day after Martin Luther King Day. Deafening silence worldwide.

I worked until midnight yesterday, to address a hundred Nobel laureates (101 precisely), 80% in the US. 

The first wave of messages was at 5 pm, before noon on the East Coast. They received the last mails some time around 6 pm their time. There has been no echo yet. Sixteen hours later.

NOBEL CALL FOR THE RELEASE OF HOSTAGES AND FOR A DURABLE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES

Because we are human beings, and human beings are not bargaining chips,

Because we are horrified by the carnages and pogroms of October 7 in the name of « armed resistance »,

We express our ultimate and universal condemnation concerning all acts of bloody savagery allegedly for the sake of a « war of liberation ». No political or religous speech, whatsoever, can ever legitimate the massacre of innocents, the murder of a child, the rape of a woman, the kidnapping of elderly people in their home.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages detained in Gaza. Prisoners of war can be exchanged. Abducted civilians are not prisoners of war.

Gaza civilians also are hostages in this horrendous chaos.

 

For a durable cessation of hostilities, we support a permanent end to all attack tunnels and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.

Thinking of Dr King's widow, and the warm-hearted support she sent us, for Bosnia, in 1995. She passed away in 2006.

What would she say now ? Probably that our stand is not emotional enough, the way it was for Bosnia. Anyway, out of the thirteen Peace laureates who launched our first Call, most of them are dead by now (Coretta Scott King, Betty Williams, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Pdts Gorbachev, de Klerk, Arafat, PM Rabin). Mairead Maguire has been unwell lately, keeps silent. The Dalai Lama, in his 89th year, is always harder to reach, more retired. Perez-Esquivel, in his 93rd year. The main lighthouses are all gone. And we are in the thick of battle.

It feels like we haven't reached the bottom of the pit quite yet. 23,000 Gazans have been killed. 14,000 of them, civilians. The median age in Gaza being 19, it means teenagers, infants, have been massacred by shells and missiles, in the thousands.

When the Russians, in Syria, targeted the Islamic State, in 2014-2015, through "indiscriminate bombing", "carpet bombing", according to Amnesty International and others NGOs, the toll was close to 20,000, and it all was fast classified, forgotten.

Likewise, when the Americans crushed Daesh, the Islamic State, in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, the human toll was 40,000 killed, most of them civilians, and nobody seemed to care. The Islamic State had-to-be terminated.

Regardless of "collateral damage". In Ukraine, ten thousand civilians have been killed since February 2022, but Ukraine has been degraded to a backburner status in the media after a year, and it feels like we're in between wars always, wondering what the next one will be.

"Why are we here if no one's listening ?"  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67958260

The best inquiry into the fate of the young, unarmed lookouts who were on duty along the Gaza fence, in Nahal Oz mainly, and who were massacred by the Hamas commandos in the early morning of October 7, has been published by the BBC, echoed by YNet News.

 'Why are we here if no one's listening?' October 7 warnings went unheard      YNet News, January 15, 2024

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bjfpvxxta

 

These are the faces of the observers who were sent to watch over the border, at their screens, killed on October 7.

I took pictures of this young soldier in the vicinity of Nahal Oz. So tense to start with (what would the hierarchy say if his photo was used one way or the other ?), but then he relaxed some when we spoke about the dog who was his only company, in the middle of nowhere. I have seldom seen such solitude and sadness on a young man's face.

Was he, aged 19, all the protection that was granted to the residents of the Gaza Envelope ? How could he not think of the fate of Sargeant Shalit, who was abducted when he was 19, and kept incommunicado in the Gaza underground for over five years ? Maybe they were digging right now, getting closer, meter after meter. And there was nobody else standing by.

We need to make it clear here : the "weak side", in this precise context, is not just what most bystanders think it is. Despite its formidable army, despite the American backup, despite the 300 F15s, F16s in their bases, despite the 100 helicopters ready to roam the skies, despite all the missiles stored, despite the costly Iron Dome, and the remarkably inefficient Iron Barrier (some of it underground), the people of Israel, isolated as they are, forsaken as they are on the ground - as could be seen on October 7, are as weak as their Palestinian neighbours, and in some ways weaker.

The Ummah - or Ummat al-Islam - boasts 1.8 billion Muslims.

Jews are only 7,2 million in Israel, and 8,5 million outside.

To the burning point : Where were the Apaches anyway, in the morning of October 7 ? Where were the F15s ?

 

January 17, 2024. Steering away from ideologies and prejudices.

In this whole context, we are not partisans. Never have been. Neither on one side nor on the other.

In astronaut Edgar Mitchell's words, we develop our points-of-view, perspectives, "from the moon" - possibly this Archemedean point David Grossman has long been looking for.

As many of us are colour-blind, regarding humanity, we strive to be bias-blind. Looking for the truth, exactitude.

Much of the criticism against Israel revolves around the stereotype of "colonialism". 

On this particular matter, there is an interesting interview of Professor Ruth Ginio, who specialized in General History. YNet News, January 17, 2024

The connection between Israel and colonialism is a topic of debate

"The West often fails to grasp the complexity of the situation we are dealing with, and these are challenges that it doesn't even recognize or know how to unravel."

"Ultimately, no matter what we call it, there is a problem and a situation that cannot persist indefinitely."

 

 January 20, 2024. Deep inside the tunnel insanity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This is an attack tunnel, dug from Lebanon into the North of Israel, by Hezbollah engineers and militias.

"On 17 December 2018, United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) acknowledged the existence of four tunnels near the Israel–Lebanon border and confirmed that two of them cross the Blue Line in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which helped end the 2006 Lebanon War."

"Operation Northern Shield" - 4 such tunnels were discovered between December 2018 and January 2019.

Updating the info to January 2024 :

https://www.timesofisrael.com/expert-hezbollah-has-built-a-vast-tunnel-network-far-more-sophisticated-than-hamass/

Tunnel system in south Lebanon runs hundreds of kms, up to the border and even into Israel

Questions from a distant, bias-free observer :

- What kind of country decides to dig attack tunnels into its neighbour's territory ?

- Is there another country on Earth exposed to such attack tunnels, North and South ?

 

January 21, 2024. "a permanent end to all attack tunnels"

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attack tunnels, detention/sequestration tunnels recently discovered by the Israeli army in Khan Yunis.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-finds-tunnel-in-khan-younis-where-20-hostages-were-held-in-inhumane-conditions/

Is it extravagant to demand a permanent end to all such substructures, meaning a demilitarization of the Gaza Strip ?

Would it be outlandish to propose the Costa Rican model, a country of five million people, without an army ?

Learn from Costa Rica, tiny and stuck as it is between Nicaragua and Panama.

Long n°1 at the Happy Planet Index, from 2009 till 2019. https://happyplanetindex.org/hpi/

It abolished its military forces in 1948, as an article in  its Constitution (1949), and has devoted the previous military budget to education, culture, and health care services.

It is happy with a small public force for law enforcement, equipped with small arms.

Contrary to its neighbour Nicaragua, it has known neither war nor civil war since 1948.

 

January, 22, 2024. Have we forgotten the forsaken hostages ?

A message from Masoud in Gaza. It starts with "Yes, we share the same motto, which is pacifism. All wars are wrong".

He suffers from malnutrition and a viral infection. He said they survive with less than 200 grams of food per day.

As a humanitarian n.g.o. we sent him a third of our reserves, and it has enabled him to buy flour and eggs, for ten.

More than this, I tell him about my soul friend, a true, active pacifist, Vivian Silver, who was burnt alive in her home in Be'eri, on October 7. I can't let go. I can't "forget".

Vivian's last message on WhatsApp, trapped in her shelter, hearing the attackers in her home, was a pledge : "I promise i'll keep a big knife in my shelter if I survive". This was a devoted, constant pacifist's last will. A promise she could not keep. It took more than a month to identify her charred remains from her DNA.

It fills one with revulsion and disbelief, when you realize "they" had specific orders to kidnap or murder all kinds of civilians in Israel, regardless of their age, gender, condition, attitude. Knowing that most inhabitants of the border kibbutzim were left-wing voters, peaceful people, who tried to build bridges with their neighbours, come what may, despite rockets and mortars constantly aimed at them.

Chaim Peri, 80 years old, Yoram Metzger, 80 too, Amiram Cooper 84, have been kept incommunicado in Gaza tunnels for 108 nights and days now.

How on earth can we endorse a policy of hostage taking, of human beings, fragile as they are, used as bargaining chips ?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-releases-new-propaganda-video-showing-3-elderly-israeli-hostages/

No news or echoes of Chaim, Yoram and Amiram, from kibbutz Nir Oz, for over a month now.

After reading Hamas' 16-page document about October 7, "Our Narrative...", there is mostly binary propaganda in it, and a number of outright lies and patent denials : ["As attested by many, the Hamas Movement dealt in a positive and kind manner with all civilians who have been held in Gaza"; "the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters didn’t target civilians, and many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion." ;"The suggestion that the Palestinian fighters committed rape against Israeli women was fully denied including by the Hamas Movement." etc.  Did the men who conceived this document believe in their rethorics ? They probably do, but people in Gaza are starting to distance themselves from the usual power speeches. 

With no sign of war ending, Gazans increasingly disenchanted with Hamas - Khalil Sayegh, Al Monitor, January 20, 2024

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/01/no-sign-war-ending-gazans-increasingly-disenchanted-hamas#ixzz8PYjNpQBW

Truth has its own voices, from the deepest sources of pain, and it can't be mistaken easily. 

https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-782750

Freed hostage recounts torture of women in Gaza's terror tunnels - Washington Post

From another source, a testimony to resilience and benevolence - Adi's message to all [Adi Kikozashvili is praying for her brother's return from the Gaza underground - he was kidnapped at the Re'im rave party on October 7] :

“Please spread unconditional love and reduce the amount of gratuitous hatred,” Kikozashvili implored the crowd. “Pay attention to the friend sitting next to you in class, look people in the eye, see what is good in them, support one another, hug one another.”

 January 23, 2024. "No military operation can be totally under control." 

"I tell you Jesus Christ himself can't keep one of these things under control." Robert McNamara, architect of the Vietnam war, then aged 75. February 11, 1991. Reacting to the American involvement in Iraq, during the second American intervention (ended in December 1991) . An older man's wisdom :

"It's not just events moving out of control. (...) because of misinformation and misperceptions, there are misjudgments as to where a nation's interests lie and what can be accomplished. (...) -- you cannot imagine the extent of misjudgment, misinformation. Events were really out of the control of either party, though both the Russians and we were trying to maintain control [at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962]."

 This is what I would oppose to an Irish former PM, who has declared "It is time to stop the killing".

Indeed. It was high time to stop the killing in the night of October 6 to October 7, when just a handful of men (five of them) took the blood-curdling decision to start a war - which they knew was bound to trigger a high number of casualties. It was still time then. When the Israeli military leaders were fast asleep, or looking the other way.

After the onslaught of October 7, and its frightful toll of 1,200 civilians slaughtered in a few hours - including 360 festivalgoers - and 240 kidnapped, how on earth could you keep this awful thing under control ?

To the Irish republicans, I would ask how long it took them to come to the conclusion that bombs and guns were not the way to reach the goal they had established ?

Did they not forego their ambition of a reunited Ireland - if that was precisely the reason behind the fighting ?

"No military operation can be totally under control" : "IDF sees highest day of casualties since October 7" - 21 killed.

 

January 26, 2024. What a difference Time makes, in terms of understanding.

Some twenty years after the facts, the "architect of the Vietnam war" was asked what his evaluation was of his strategy.

Q. At the time you left government [1968], the U.S. was in the midst of one of the greatest bombing campaigns in the history of warfare, and today the U.S. has launched one even greater. You thought the bombing would work at the time?

A. No, I didn't think it would work at the time.

Q. Why undertake it then? 

A. Because we had to try to prove it wouldn't work, number one, and other people thought it would work.

Q. What other people?

A. A majority of the senior military commanders, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the President.

Q. Were you opposed to it from the beginning?

 A. It wasn't that I was opposed to it; I didn't think it would work from the beginning.

 You read it again, and again : it was not that he was, as main architect of the war in the sixties, opposed to massive bombing campaigns, it's that he didn't think it would work, from the beginning. [Do we need to recall that three million Vietnamese died from these campaigns, from napalm, cluster bombs and all, out of a population of 47 million then. Three million human beings were killed, because those who decided upon their holocaust "had to try to prove it wouldn't work", "and other people thought it would work..."]  What kind of perverted rationale was that, to start with ?

Take it back to 1961, 1962, the US vs Vietnam. A generalized view of such conflicts :

"...the consequences of military action are unpredictable. I learned this as Secretary time after time after time: we did certain things we thought would lead to certain results, and the results were different."

The problem was clearly the extent of misjudgment and misinformation, the distance between the USA and Vietnam being over 8,000 miles.

Likewise, concerning the islamists' onslaught of October 7, the catch was misinformation and misjudgment, that enabled the border breaches and massacres, kidnappings, to happen, on such a traumatizing scale. The distance, though, here is in hundreds of yards, a few kilometers barely between the sides.

Making it so clear that, in 2023-2024,  the Gaza problem is the attack tunnels.

If any measure of peace is to be attained, for Israelis as well as for Gazans, these tunnels have to be dismantled. Permanently dismantled.

Had the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon) been efficient - the way the UNPROFOR was in Bosnia - we might have dreamt of some kind of a UN Interim Force along the Gaza borders. Sadly, history never has had that in store.

Leading us to the ruling the International Court of Justice (one of the six organs of the United Nations) in Haag is scheduled to emit today. Sadly again, what is the relevance of any such ruling, illustrating a judiciary power devoid of any executive power ?

You think of a country, any country, with teams of judges in courts, but no police forces to enforce the laws : a caricature.
Even the most peaceful, innocent, country of all, Costa Rica, has law enforcement forces.

 Ami Ayalon. Born in 1945. Former head of the Shin Bet, Israel's secret service, and once commander-in-chief of the Navy. When he was 24 he took part in an assault on a fortified Egyptian island, in 1969. Wounded four times, he kept fighting until his mission was accomplished and the island was under control.

His philosophy today : "For lack of political objectives, war becomes an end in itself, instead of being the means to reach a goal. When war becomes its own end, it morphs into endless war."

 Always the question of ends and means. Just always.

You don't have to be Gandhi to realize that the achievement of your end mostly depends upon the means used.

2 pm ICJ does not demand end to fighting; orders Israel to take all measures to prevent genocide

A courageous and rational ruling, if anything : you just don't order a series of typhoons to stop, like apprentice wizards would join in Rain Chants, against a monsoon, or a flood. Any other statement would have ridiculed the court.

"No rain, no rain !" - maybe that seemed to work for a little while in Woodstock, 1969, but the days of Woodstock are far gone.

"No war, no war !" We are dealing with quite another manmade set of appalling catastrophes.

Facing concrete chains of causes and effects, starting on October 7 at dawn.

Anyone arguing about "context": forget the old, out-of-date software of the fifties in the past century, pointing to "colonialism" (19th century) and the such, switch to what we find from Tehran to Kabul, from Beyruth to Raqqa, Mosul... - Paris in 2015, Nice in July 2016, Brussels in March 2016, for that matter.

Open the pages of the Sinai Insurgency (2011-2023), led by local bedouin tribesmen and a dozen jihadi groups (including Al Qaeda in Sinai Peninsula), opposing some twelve thousand guerillas to 40 Egyptian battalions. With a toll of 10,000 killed (among them the 224 passengers of a Russian civilian jet targeted by the "Islamic State's Sinai Province" in October 2015). In April 2017, ISIS called for attacks on all Egyptian Christians, and organized the Palm Sunday bombings, in Tanta and Alexandria - seat of the Coptic papacy.

In "the end", 2023, Egyptian President Al-Sisi could claim the "end of terrorism", having succeeded in eliminating most of them.

What happened to the survivors ? They went to Gaza of course. Gaza, where they had established rooted connections for a dozen years : transfers of weapons, ammunition, money, and fighters. Pretty much the way the Basque gunmen and armed militants of ETA had organized themselves between Spain and France.

 

January 27, 2024. Was Haag just a pantomime ? 

"We need someone from outside to enlighten us about our mistakes"  Ami Ayalon

In Haag, the January 26 ruling was adopted by 15 justices out of 17, representing

the USA, Russia, China, Japan, India, Brazil, France, Germany, Uganda, Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia... in the name of the United Nations. Humankind, that is.

 You can't just dismiss them all as "out of touch" or "irrelevant".

Israeli Justice Aharon barak is one of the seventeen.

 Barak voted in favor of two measures included in the decision: requiring Israel to do everything “within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip,” and ordering “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

 We obviously stand by, and praise these two measures.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/justice-barak-icj-ruling-based-on-scant-evidence-ugandan-judge-legal-case-a-desperate-bid/

The Court could have ordered an immediate and unilateral ceasefire, meaning that it believed a genocide was actually taking place. It could have issued an order for Israel to reduce or stop its offensive operations.

The fact that it chose not to do so confirms us in our analysis and stand, as exposed in the Nobel Call for the Release of Hostages and for a Durable Cessation of Hostilities.

 

January 28, 2024. Be the Change you Wish to See in the World. (Gandhi)

 At midnight yesterday, 494 persons had visited our virtual home, shared in almost 600 pages.

At seven a.m. today, they are 280. 303 at 8 a.m.  Welcome, friends, searchers, seekers ! Most welcome ! Indeed.

At midnight, we counted 842.

n.b.: the Gandhi quote does not mean we would kneel down and offer our throats to would-be cutthroats.

But what could Gandhi have said on October 7 ?

On January 30, 1948, he was murdered by a young Hindu fanatic, who was sentenced to death on November 8, 1949, and hanged a week later. India had been declared independent by mid-August 1947. By the same token, it was partitioned along religious lines, and Pakistan was created, accepted as a state by the United Nations on September 30, 1947. Following the partition, there remained around 330 million people in India, 30 million Muslims had emigrated to "West" Pakistan, another 30 million to "East" Pakistan (Bangla Desh). It is estimated that one million people died from partition violence. Gandhi's cruellest failure.

January 29, 2024. Justice Barak's stand, in Haag. Aharon Barak, born 1n 1936 in Kaunas, Lithuania.

"Genocide is more than just a word to me, this is the most serious accusation possible"

"Only 5% of Lithuanian Jews survived. 

"In the most difficult moments in the ghetto, we preserved our humanity. The Nazis succeeded in murdering many of our people, but they failed to take away our humanity." 

 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-783929

 

January 30, 2024. Looking for the Bibas family.

 The Bibas family lived in Nir Oz, a quiet life, unconcerned with the world's turmoils, after Shiri Bibas's parents had emigrated from Argentina. Margit, 60, and Yosi, 67, were murdered in cold blood in their Nir Oz home on October 7.

 Their son-in-law Yarden was also assassinated. Their daughter and grandsons then were kidnapped into Gaza.

180 inhabitants out of the 400 who lived in Nir Oz were either slaughtered or kidnapped.

We are tragically aware of the fate of thousands of families in Gaza who have suffered the worst hell through fire and steel. Human losses do not cancel each other.

Kfir Bibas was 9 months old when he was kidnapped with his mom and elder brother, aged 4. We don't know anything about them.

What do you call people who breach through borders to kidnap babies, infants, and helpless old people ?

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages detained in Gaza. Prisoners of war can be exchanged. Abducted civilians are not prisoners of war.

 NOBEL CALL FOR THE RELEASE OF HOSTAGES AND FOR A DURABLE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES

January 31, 2024. Why are we not on the platform of the NGOs begging for an immediate cease-fire?

You think twice, and you realize just everybody wants the same, i.e. an end to chaos and devastation. Even the terrorists and their leaders, who started this awful, Goddamned war. Even the heads of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza plead for it, demand it. It is obvious that the thousands of Israeli reservists who are wading in Gaza's soaked sands, and venturing into its deadly underground, had rather go back home, and take care of their normal jobs, their families.

What is really relevant is, still, the conditions of possibility of what we strive for.

Our stand is clear on the matter, and has been formulated in our Newsletter 125 :

"The first condition of possibility for peace is the release of all the hostages kidnapped on October 7, 2024 - as human beings are no bargaining chips. The other condition is the permanent end to all attack and sequestration tunnels in Gaza. The same way the Irish and Basque terrorists finally dumped their arms - in 1994 for the IRA, 2011 for the ETA -, or the way the Algerian terrorists were defeated in 1998-1999, the Palestinian terrorists must disarm. The essential struggle for freedom and justice can only unfold, and prevail, through non-violent means."

 https://twitter.com/i/status/1731750802799145416   :   a 40-second video about the means used on October 7.