Israeli Video Games in Gaza by
Alison Weir,
August 24, 2011
He looks at the camera with
bright eyes and the beginning of a smile, wearing a miniature dark blue
zipper sweatshirt, the cuffs folded up a bit to make it fit.
I can imagine his mother dressing
him that morning, making sure he would be warm enough. I wonder if she’s
the one who took the picture. Someone has written on the photo “kisses.”
It’s not a formal picture. He’s outside on a sunny day. It
looks like he was probably moving when the picture was snapped; his
arms seem to be swinging a little. As with most almost two-year-olds,
I suspect it was hard to get him to stay still long enough for a photo.
It’s a happy picture, the
kind that makes you smile; perhaps it reminds you of funny, energetic
little children you know or remember.
Until you see the next picture.
It was taken on his second birthday. His name was Islam Quraiqe.
Death from a drone strike is
not pretty. The small body is charred, ripped apart; internal organs are
pouring out.
He had been riding with his
father and uncle on a motorcycle in Gaza when the missile hit them. His 29-year-old father, a member
of the Palestinian resistance, and 32-year-old uncle physician were
also killed. Five bystanders, including a woman, were injured.
The missile was fired remotely
by an Israeli sitting in front of a video screen and operating one of
the many drones that periodically fly over Gaza and shoot Palestinians
like fish in a fishbowl. The operators are usually female, the preferred group for this kind
of desk job.
The drones, which look like
small, pilotless jets, are equipped with precision-guided
missiles.
Those operating them receive
real-time video feeds from sensors located on the drone: a color nose
camera, a TV lens, an infrared camera for low light and night, and a
synthetic radar for looking through smoke, clouds, or haze. The cameras
produce full-motion video as well as still-frame radar images.
Numerous articles extol the
virtues of Israeli drones. An Aug. 17 article by David Rodman reports: “The Israel
Air Force (IAF) has a rich history of employing unmanned aerial vehicles
in battle with excellent results.” Rodman crows that, with the possible
exception of the United States, “Israel is the country most closely
identified with [drone] operations in the post-World War II period.”
Islam was the second 2-year-old
to be killed by Israeli forces in two days.
The first was killed by an
Israeli “precision” rocket the day before. The boy’s name was Malek Sha’at. His father was also killed. The only picture available online is of a small shrouded
body.
An article at WorldNetDaily.com by reporter
Aaron Klein proclaims that Israeli weapons are “capable of taking
out stationary and moving targets with minimal collateral damage.”
Perhaps Klein is right. Two
years of life is decidedly minimal. Intolerably so.
Context
During this period (Aug. 18-20, 2011) Israeli forces
killed approximately 15
Palestinians, including
at least one other child, a 13-year-old, and injured about 60, nine of them children. Gazan resistance
forces killed one Israeli and injured about 20.
Gazan hospitals, hard hit by the years-long Israeli siege, report that they have run out of 150 medicines
and 160 types of medical equipment.
The Israeli assaults were allegedly
triggered by attacks,
by unknown gunmen on the Egyptian border with Israel, that killed eight
Israelis on Thursday, Aug. 18. Israeli forces killed the attackers in Eilat, also shooting
dead, according to the BBC, five Egyptian policemen. The Israeli defense minister told Egypt afterward that “Israel regrets the deaths.”
There is no evidence connecting
Gazan resistance groups to the attack, and they have denied responsibility for it. Hamas and all
the armed factions in Gaza had maintained a unilateral de facto ceasefire since 2009. A handful of small groups,
however, have refused to abide by the ceasefire.
Groups in Egypt have periodically
taken actions opposing Israel. Egyptian authorities
say they have identified three of the attackers, who appear
to have been based in the Sinai, there are reports that Israeli intelligence warned of
the attack ahead of time, and there is mounting information suggesting that the attackers may
have been Egyptian, not Gazan.
While many reports describe
the Israeli actions as retaliatory, Israeli attacks on Gaza occur regularly
and were already ongoing before the Eilat attack.
Two days earlier, on Tuesday,
an Israeli airstrike killed a 29-year-old Palestinian man in the
morning, and Israeli ground soldiers killed a disabled teenager later in the day. The youth was shot
more than 10 times, mostly in the head. On Wednesday night there were
more Israeli air attacks throughout Gaza. (The Los Angeles Times called
this a period of “relative calm.”)
Some analysts suggest that the recent Israeli escalation
against Gaza may have been prompted, at least in part, by Netanyahu’s
desire to deflect energy from the massive social protests that have
been enveloping Israel recently.
The death toll among Gazans
and Israelis has been notably disproportionate. In Israel’s December-January
2008-2009 “Cast Lead” assault, Israeli forces killed approximately 1,387 Gazans, while resistance forces killed nine Israelis. In the preceding
year, Israeli forces
killed 713 Gazans, while Gazan resistance fighters killed eight Israelis. Between Cast Lead and the end of July 2011, Israeli
forces killed
approximately 200
Gazans, while Palestinian resistance groups killed approximately five Israelis.
Most of Gaza’s residents
are refugee families who were forcibly pushed out by Israel in its 1947-49 founding war, in which non-Jews, who originally
made up over 70 percent of the inhabitants, were expelled.
In violation of international
law, they have been prohibited from returning to their homes and have lived under
crippling Israeli occupation for decades. Palestinian land is continually confiscated by Israel for Jewish-only use. A popular uprising against Israeli occupation began in
the fall of 2000.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud
Barak said on Aug. 21: “Those who operate
against us will be decapitated.” That night at least 100 Israeli military vehicles stormed
into the West Bank city of Hebron, closing the city off for hours and
rounding up more than 50 Palestinians, including several academics and
members of charitable associations.
On Saturday, Aug. 20,
Israeli Aerospace Industries proudly unveiled its latest drone, known
as the GHOST, which the company announced “is
at the forefront of technology thanks to years of experience and knowledge
acquired in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles.”
Israel partisan and author
David Rodman reports that Israeli drones “played a substantial
part” in Israel’s 1982 Lebanon War (in which Israeli forces killed
at least 17,825 Lebanese, compared to approximately 368 Israelis killed by the Lebanese resistance)
and that their use in what he acknowledges in profound understatement
were “asymmetric conflicts” — the 2006 Second Lebanon War (Israeli
forces killed at least 1,125
Lebanese, almost
all civilians, a third of them children; Lebanese resistance forces killed
164 Israelis, almost three-quarters of them soldiers) and the Cast Lead operation
– “sparked renewed global interest in Israeli drone operations.”
Rodman states: “In terms of the technological
sophistication of its UAV force, Israel is unquestionably well ahead
of the pack. Only the United States is in the same league.”
