The Dahiya Doctrine
In the summer of 2006, during Israel’s so-called Lebanon war, Israeli forces bombed Dahiya, a suburb south of Beirut, leveling much of it to the ground. At the time, Israel’s chief of staff, Gen. Dan Halutz, bragged that the army’s targeting of infrastructure would “turn back the clock in Lebanon twenty years”2 and made the argument that inflicting gross damage on civilian areas would send a deterrent message to any armed group that was hostile to Israel. The purported justification for this massive bombing was the presence of Hezbollah partisans, both combatants and noncombatants, in the area. At the time, human rights organizations condemned the Israeli attacks as “serious violations of international law,” describing them as “indiscriminate, disproportionate, and otherwise unjustified”3 but as with other Israeli war crimes, the international community remained largely silent.
The policy of massive bombardment remained unnamed until the then head of the Northern Command, Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, articulated what became known as the Dahiya doctrine in a newspaper interview just months prior to Israel’s 2008–2009 attack on the Gaza Strip. “We will apply disproportionate force on [every village] and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases,” Eizenkot told Yedioth Ahronoth. “This isn’t a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has already been approved.”4
The Dahiya doctrine is in clear violation of the international legal requirements of proportionality and discrimination. But in order to obscure the killing of more than 2,100 Palestinians, the bombing of the Gaza Strip’s sole power plant, 62 hospitals and clinics, 220 schools, tens of thousands of homes and countless mosques, the entire population of the Gaza Strip needed to be transformed into enemies—faceless, nameless, irrational beings whose deaths were celebrated by their own or who were deliberately killed to harm Israel’s image. Israel’s media campaign was a precise reflection of its military campaign, depicting Palestinians as irrational individuals who attacked Israel for no reason and who, ultimately, had only themselves to blame for their own deaths.
Eliding the Occupation, the Siege, and Ongoing Military Attacks
As part of its effort to demonize Palestinians, the Israeli hasbara machine singled out Hamas, portraying it as an irrational actor which, for no logical reason, was carrying out a military attack on Israel. In so doing, Israel stripped its narrative of any reference to the political context, portraying itself as an ordinary country facing a crazed enemy. Ignored by Israeli officials and, worse still, by mainstream media, were any references to Israel’s eight-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, its persisting military occupation, and its own military actions and cease-fire violations in the lead-up to the massive onslaught. The omissions included a ferocious security sweep through the West Bank, in which hundreds of Palestinians were detained, injured, and even killed, as well as multiple air strikes on the Gaza Strip that killed more than ten Palestinians before a single rocket was fired from the territory.
This media portrayal of Israel as a “normal” entity, devoid of a repugnant colonial history, whether past or present, stands in stark contrast with the candid statements of some of the country’s previous military and political figures. In 1956, for example, Israeli army chief of staff Moshe Dayan noted in his oration at the funeral for an Israeli security officer from the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, who had been ambushed by fedayeen from Gaza:
Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred for us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves....”5
While Dayan also argued that Israel should both heavily arm itself and be prepared for perpetual conflict with Palestinians, he understood that such a permanent conflict was the logical result of Israeli action—and said as much. Dayan’s candor contrasts sharply with the opacity of the current Israeli establishment, whose narrative echoes Prime Minister Netanyahu’s oft-repeated view that Hamas “is another instance of Islamist extremism, violent extremism that has no resolvable grievance.”6 Not only were Palestinians (and specifically Hamas) now irrational actors, attacking Israel for no good reason, they were further transformed from nationalist, political actors into an unhinged and extreme Islamist threat. At the same press conference where he uttered the words quoted above, Netanyahu added, “Hamas is like ISIS, Hamas is like al-Qaeda, Hamas is like Hizballah, Hamas is like Boko Haram.” The Israeli prime minister even tweeted, “RT THIS: Hamas is ISIS. ISIS is Hamas. They’re enemies of Peace [sic]. They’re enemies of all civilized countries.”7
These comparisons, particularly with ISIS, were both illogical and incorrect. Hamas has a nationalist agenda while ISIS has an anti-nationalist agenda, and al-Qaeda has denounced Hamas on numerous occasions. But the comparisons were made anyway, to convince a largely ill-informed Western audience that Israel faces the same “global terror” threat as the one being fought by the United States and to elicit support for Israel’s brutal actions against Hamas-controlled Gaza. In the face of this irrational, demonic enemy, Israel could then claim it was acting in self-defense and portrayed itself as a victim of barrages of rockets. During another press appearance, Netanyahu noted that, “There’s only been one other instance where a democracy has been rocketed and pelleted with these projectiles of death, and that’s Britain during World War II...Israel is undergoing a similar bombardment.”8
Technology, such as the Red Alert smartphone app using data provided by the Israeli army, assisted in spreading this narrative. The app, downloaded more than one million times during the attack on Gaza, sounded a high-pitched alarm each time a rocket was launched, irrespective of whether the rocket landed in the water, on an army base, in a field, or elsewhere. For journalists covering the attack, the Red Alert app proved to be a formidable tool in helping paint a picture of the rocket fire as well as the psychological impact of Israeli sirens.
Israeli statements to the Western media omitted describing not only the crude quality and accuracy of the projectiles used on the Palestinian side, but also the high-tech Iron Dome system in place to stop them. Interestingly, and well in accordance with past habit, in the English language media, Israel portrayed itself as the underdog, whereas in the Arabic-language media, it presented itself as the strong and almighty nation that was impervious to Hamas’s weak and “useless” rockets. As noted by Prof. William Youmans of George Washington University, “Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee tweeted in Arabic to his more than 119,000 followers that the rockets are ‘weak’ and a ‘failure’ and that the threat is exaggerated by Hamas.”9 In one tweet, Adraee apparently noted, “As usual rockets fired by Hamas exploded in the sky.”10 By Israel’s own account, the Iron Dome system achieved an “almost 90 percent success rate.” Yet, despite the “weak” rockets that “as usual...exploded in the sky” and a missile defense system operating at a success rate of “almost 90 percent,” Israel continued to portray itself as the hapless victim, facing a formidable and irrational enemy that had ordinary Israelis cowering in shelters. This deceitful narrative was quickly revised after the flight cancellations by several foreign carriers and a few brief closures of Ben Gurion Airport when Israel had to decide whether it was a nation under siege, and hence one to and from which air travel was unsafe, or whether it was still a summer vacation destination, safe enough even for the likes of billionaire and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who flew in on El Al, the Israeli national carrier, in a show of solidarity.
Blaming Palestinians for Their Own Deaths
Alongside its portrayal of Hamas as an irrational, demonic actor, Israel needed a means to explain away bombing hospitals, schools, mosques, shelters, medical clinics, and ambulances, as well as entire residential neighborhoods. As with the 2008–9 assault on Gaza, once again the high Palestin
ian death toll proved to be the Israelis’ Achilles’ heel: twenty-one hundred Palestinians killed, 70 percent of whom were classified as noncombatants, including over five hundred children. To counter what former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright deemed an “image” problem,11 Israeli officials adopted a new approach that consisted in blaming Palestinians—specifically Hamas—for their own deaths. Thus, according to that view, Hamas was responsible because they fired rockets from areas that Israel subsequently bombed or because Hamas gave specific orders for civilians to remain in areas that were about to be bombed. In other words, Palestinian civilians were unknowingly serving as Hamas’s human shields. Despite the fact that countless journalists and others refuted these allegations and despite the fact that it has since been established that Israel has continued its own practice of using Palestinians as human shields,12 Israel’s vocal allegation was repeated ceaselessly.
Palestinian civilians used by Hamas as human shields was a talking point in the 2008–2009 Operation Cast Lead, but this time around the Israeli media machine took it one step further: as a means of further dehumanizing Palestinians, Israel cynically began focusing (and repeating) claims that Palestinians enjoyed a “culture of martyrdom” and hence did not care whether civilians were killed, provided that they had the effect of harming Israel’s image. In a CNN interview on July 27, Netanyahu asserted, that Hamas “want to pile up more and more dead bodies of Palestinian civilians”13 and on another occasion he echoed the words of the Washington Post commentator, Charles Krauthammer,14 saying, “...they [Hamas] use telegenically-dead Palestinians for their cause. They want—the more dead, the better.”15 The dehumanization did not stop there, however. Soon all Palestinians, not merely Hamas, wanted to see more of their own dead, and no one was innocent. In other words, Palestinians became knowing human shields or, worse still, no longer civilians worthy of protection. In an opinion piece titled “In Gaza, There Is No Such Thing as ‘Innocent Civilians,’” Israel’s former national security adviser Giora Eiland noted, “...they [Palestinians in Gaza] are to blame for this situation just like Germany’s residents were to blame for electing Hitler as their leader and paid a heavy price for that, and rightfully so.”16
These statements, like those uttered by leaders in other conflicts where mass atrocities have been committed, were made precisely to dehumanize Palestinians and to justify Israel’s defiance of international law governing occupation and war. As Thomas Friedman explained in regard to Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, the strategy is “to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a non-state actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians—the families and employers of the militants—to restrain Hezbollah in the future.”17 Thus, it became easy for Israel to justify the killing of noncombatants—they were either members of Hamas or human shields of Hamas—and to explain away the wholesale destruction of Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza by arguing that it was used by Hamas or for the benefit of Hamas.
The dehumanization did not simply come from Israel’s hasbara machine—journalists and even the Palestinian leadership inadvertently aided the endeavor. In the belief that they had to add “balance” to a lopsided war and lopsided civilian casualties, several reporters covered an injured owl in Israel’s zoo and recounted the elephants’ distress at the sound of the high-pitched sirens. Palestinian children with body parts scattered among the rubble were apparently too commonplace to be journalistically relevant.
After the 2008–2009 and 2012 attacks on Gaza (Operation Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense), it was to be hoped that the Palestinian Authority (PA) would have learned to do more than simply remain silent as Israeli bombs rained down on the population, indiscriminately killing children. Palestinian officials were nowhere to be seen or heard in the first few weeks of the assault, probably fearing that speaking out would entail defending Hamas. But their silence in the face of so much brutality spoke volumes and reinforced Israel’s assiduously crafted message that there were really no innocents in Gaza. The official Palestinian silence also demonstrated the persistent absence of a Palestinian media strategy not only addressing Israel’s outlandish claims but also putting forth the Palestinian narrative without having to be dragged into responding to such claims. Despite the creation of a number of PA, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Fatah media organizations, now in place for more than two decades, a unified media strategy remains nonexistent. Instead, as the U.S. mainstream media ratcheted up its aggressive tone—with some talk shows turning into shouting matches or punching contests—individuals attempting to speak out about Palestinian rights, and to highlight Israel’s criminal behavior, were subjected to vitriol.
My personal experience with the mainstream media required me to devote significant time and energy to challenging the unquestioned characterizations according to which Palestinians both wanted and deserved to be the victims of Israeli bombs. In the dozens of interviews I gave, virtually every one featured an interviewer asking me questions that cemented rather than challenged Israel’s media discourse. Without missing a beat, reporters asked questions about Hamas’s charter, Palestinian textbooks, and streets named after “martyrs” as though the charter, the textbooks, and the streets in question were responsible for the dropping of 20,000 tons of bombs on 1.8 million beleaguered individuals and as if every person in Gaza were a combatant. The fallout from the interviews was no less bad, with pro-Israel activists sending me death and rape threats after a media appearance in which I said that oppressed peoples around the world, including Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, had dug tunnels for their survival.
One can only hope that there will be no more massacres in the Gaza Strip, that the news media will learn to question Israel’s outlandish claims, and that the Mahmoud Abbas–led Fatah and PA will realize that Gaza and its residents are not the enemy. Absent such changes, I fear that Palestinians will, once again, have to defend their very right to exist and Israel will further entrench the Dahiya doctrine.
Journal of Palestine Studies 44, no. 1 (Autumn 2014), pp. 91-96.
The Palestinians’ Right to Self-Defense
Chris Hedges
If Israel insists, as the Bosnian Serbs did in Sarajevo, on using the weapons of industrial warfare against a helpless civilian population then that population has an inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The international community will have to either act to immediately halt Israeli attacks and lift the blockade of Gaza or acknowledge the right of the Palestinians to use weapons to defend themselves.
No nation, including any in the Muslim world, appears willing to intervene to protect the Palestinians. No world body, including the United Nations, appears willing or able to pressure Israel through sanctions to conform to the norms of international law. And the longer we in the world community fail to act, the worse the spiral of violence will become.
Israel does not have the right to drop 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs on Gaza. It does not have the right to pound Gaza with heavy artillery and with shells lobbed from gunboats. It does not have the right to send in mechanized ground units or to target hospitals, schools and mosques, along with Gaza’s water and electrical systems. It does not have the right to displace over 100,000 people from their homes. The entire occupation, under which Israel has nearly complete control of the sea, the air and the borders of Gaza, is illegal.
Violence, even when employed in self-defense, is a curse. It empowers the ruthless and punishes the innocent. It leaves in its aftermath horrific emotional and physical scars. But, as I learned in Sarajevo during the 1990s Bosnian War, when forces bent on your annihilation attack you relentlessly, and when no one comes to your aid, you must aid yourself. When Sarajevo was being hit with 2,000 shells a day and under heavy sniper fire in the summer of 1995 no one among the suffering Bo
snians spoke to me about wanting to mount nonviolent resistance. No one among them saw the UN-imposed arms embargo against the Bosnian government as rational, given the rain of sniper fire and the 90-millimeter tank rounds and 155-millimeter howitzer shells that were exploding day and night in the city. The Bosnians were reduced, like the Palestinians in Gaza, to smuggling in light weapons through clandestine tunnels. Their enemies, the Serbs—like the Israelis in the current conflict—were constantly trying to blow up tunnels. The Bosnian forces in Sarajevo, with their meager weapons, desperately attempted to hold the trench lines that circled the city. And it is much the same in Gaza. It was only repeated NATO airstrikes in the fall of 1995 that prevented the Bosnian-held areas from being overrun by advancing Serbian forces. The Palestinians cannot count on a similar intervention.
The number of dead in Gaza resulting from the Israeli assault has topped 650, and about 80 percent have been civilians. The number of wounded Palestinians is over 4,000 and a substantial fraction of these victims are children. At what point do the numbers of dead and wounded justify self-defense? 5,000? 10,000? 20,000? At what point do Palestinians have the elemental right to protect their families and their homes?
Article 51 does not answer these specific questions, but the International Court of Justice does in the case of Nicaragua v. United States. The court ruled in that case that a state must endure an armed attack before it can resort to self-defense. The definition of an armed attack, in addition to being “action by regular armed forces across an international border,” includes sending or sponsoring armed bands, mercenaries or irregulars that commit acts of force against another state. The court held that any state under attack must first request outside assistance before undertaking armed self-defense. According to U.N. Charter Article 51, a state’s right to self-defense ends when the Security Council meets the terms of the article by “tak[ing] the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
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