Adam Horowitz writes:
Today the Christian Science Monitor has a piece by Alan Dershowitz defending Israel's actions. I could respond to his article point by point, but it's really just the same justifications for collective punishment that he and other Jewish luminaries have been offering for decades. In a tired tradition, Dershowitz tries to blame the Palestinians for making Israel
kill them - "The firing of rockets at civilians from densely populated
civilian areas is the newest tactic in the war between terrorists who
love death and democracies that love life." Golda Meir
articulated this sentiment most famously and succinctly after the 1967
war: "When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the
Arabs
for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for
having forced us to kill their sons."
The one piece of the
Dershowitz article that is worth responding to is his comments on
Sderot: "The residents of Sderot were demanding that
their nation take action to protect them," which he takes as a demand
that Israel obliterate Gaza.
Like
Dershowitz I've been to Sderot: a year ago in November, 2007.
Like him, I saw the devastating effect of the missiles from Gaza.
Even though there had not been deaths from these rockets in recent
memory at that time, it was clear that the missiles had inflicted an
incredible mental impact, as I am sure you can imagine. The people of
Sderot who I met wanted an end to the missiles, and an end to the
conflict--as much as any Israeli I met--but they also understood that
militarism will not protect them.
Unlike Dershowitz, the people I met with were not calling for war,
they were calling for negotiation. They knew that they would be the
ones to catch the brunt of an attach on Gaza, not Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem. Even an IDF
commander I met told me, off the record, "The Qassams are like stones,
there is no way to stop them. The only way is negotiation." My
experience has been affirmed by the people of Sderot itself. Read the
text of this petition signed by hundreds of Sderot's residents at jews sans frontieres. From the petition: