The University of California, San Diego, Ethnic Studies Department has brought shame to the greater San Diego community with its “Statement on the Racial Violence in the Gaza Strip”[1].

Israel has not caused “an astounding number of civilian deaths,” as accused by UCSD’s Ethnic Studies Department. It now appears that the civilian toll was probably exaggerated. The Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera has quoted a Shifa Hospital physician as stating that the number of dead in Gaza was only 500 to 600, most of them young people of 17-23 and Hamas fighters. (“Gazan Doctor Says Death Toll Inflated”[2]. C.A.M.E.R.A., too, has done a lengthy analysis calling into question the Palestinian claim about casualties in the article “Gaza Casualties, Civilian or Combatant?”[3] C.A.M.E.R.A. has pointed out, among other things, that Hamas called upon their fighters to take off their uniforms and put on civilian clothing. The IDF has now also documented some of the errors in earlier claims by the Palestinians and revised its figures on non-combatant casualties downward [4].

The above notwithstanding, even a civilian death toll in Gaza of 1,000 would not have been excessive, given the nature of Israel’s enemy and the restraint exercised by Israel before launching the defensive Operation Cast Lead to try to stop the rain of rockets-something like 5,000 of them-launched into Israel from Gaza since Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. The UCSD Ethnic Studies Department appears to be suggesting that Israel’s eventual response to the rockets launched against Israeli’s own civilian population was disproportionate because not as many Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rockets as the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli’s Operation Cast Lead. This would seem to be a misunderstanding of the Law of Proportionality in wartime, which calls for an assessment of whether or not the probable benefit of a particular operation justifies the risk of that operation in terms of probable casualties. Israel builds shelters for its people; Hamas does not build shelters for its people. Thus, in spite of Israel’s thousands of leaflets dropped and phone calls made warning ordinary Gazans to get out of the way of intended targets, Gaza civilians were caught in the crosshairs-the fault of their cynical elected government, which encourages its fighters to hide behind human shields and thus appears to care less for the lives of those it governs than Israelis do.

Another accusation of the Ethnic Studies Department is that Israel has denied “basic necessities including food, water, and health care” to Gazans. The Israel Project’s “Update: Gaza By the Numbers”[5] details the 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid delivered by 508 trucks from Israel by January 5 during Operation Cast Lead. One can also read, in the Jewish Virtual Library’s article “Israel’s Humanitarian Aid in Gaza,” about the humanitarian aid going to Gaza from Israel and some of Hamas’ thefts of such aid as well as the medical field clinic Israel set up at the Erez crossing for Gaza casualties [6].

Nor has Israel maliciously targeted civilian locations such as “hospitals, mosques, schools, residential buildings and other civilians locations,” as additionally accused in the Ethnic Studies Department statement, since these are the locations where Hamas stores ammunition and from which Hamas fires. The U.N.’s erroneous accusation that Israel fired at a UN school in Gaza has now been corrected by the U.N. itself [7].

Last, the Ethnic Studies Department’s accusation that Israel’s campaign in Gaza was racially motivated is simply a bit of spurious nonsense. Israelis come in almost all colors-white, brown (Mizrachi Jews, the refugees, or the descendants of refugees, from Arab lands), and black (Ethiopian Jews, two of whose children were killed in Sderot by rockets fired from Gaza). Asian tourists are also in evidence in Israel in increasing numbers. And then there are all those Israeli Arabs, about a million of them, almost 20% of the Israeli population. Aren’t they the same color as the Arabs in Gaza? Aren’t they from the same racial or ethnic group? So how can Israel be accused of racism simply because the Hamas terrorists against whom Israel has been fighting in Gaza have brown skins?

Have war crimes been committed? Yes, but by Hamas. As Irwin Cotler, former Attorney General of Canada, and legal expert Alan Dershowitz have pointed out, Hamas has violated International Law by targeting civilians in a sovereign nation (Israel), launching rockets at Israel from within civilian areas in Gaza, using humanitarian symbols to launch attacks (such as transporting fighters and ammunition in ambulances), inciting to genocide (as in the Hamas Charter), attacking in widespread and systematic fashion, and using children in armed conflict.[8]

It would be interesting to ask the drafters and signatories to the Ethnic Studies Department “Statement on the Racial Violence in the Gaza Strip” what they would have done, or would do, to stop the rockets and mortars launched from Gaza against Israeli civilians, particularly since these rockets are still falling on Israel-even now, after Israel’s unilateral Cease Fire and withdrawal following Operation Cast Lead and Hamas’ Cease Fire agreement. One wonders where the “righteous” voices in UCSD’s Ethnic Studies Department were during the past several years when rockets were falling all over Southern Israel or even when homicide bombers were blowing themselves up at Israeli pizza parlors, discos, and hotel Seder celebrations… until Israel built that “apartheid” wall.

Marjorie Rosenfeld is a retired analyst from the Strategic Systems Program of the US Department of the Navy. She had been an instructor at Southern Methodist University.

Notes:

[1] http://www.ethnicstudies.ucsd.edu/currentissues.shtml

[2] http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2009/01/gaza_doctor_say.php

[3] http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1603

[4] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304788684&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

[5] http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=hsJPK0PIJpH&b=689705&ct=6479919

[6] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/aidgaza.html

[7] http://www.worthynews.com/4491-un-admits-its-school-was-not-hit-by-israel

[8] See http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=42297, http://current.com/items/89718617/gaza_is_a_war_crimes_case_study.htm,
and http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/01/the-hamas-war-crime-strategy.php.
Also relevant in this context is an analysis by Justus Reid Weiner and Avi Bell entitled, “International Law and the Fighting in Gaza” at http://www.jcpa.org/text/puzzle1.pdf.