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Hamas has smuggled 20 tons of explosives
into the Gaza Strip, and that is aside from the anti-aircraft
and antitank missiles. That is what the Israel Defense Forces
has calculated, and it made sure to pump this frightening information
into the Israeli media over the course of several days, raising
the specter of Hezbollah-type attacks.
Despite half-hearted denials
from Hamas, these statistics are believable. The Israeli information
about weapons smuggling is supported by the simplistic thinking
of Palestinian groups and their desire to engage in emulation:
Hezbollah defeated Israel, so let us arm ourselves like Hezbollah.
Armed resistance proved itself in Lebanon, they think, and it
will prove itself for us, too. Minor issues like the very different
geographic expanse, the population density, and the Strip's isolation
from the rest of the world do not affect the mimics' considerations.
Neither do more complex analyses
that show that Hezbollah erred in its political-military calculations
and did not expect such a destructive Israeli response. The mimics
are particularly unconcerned by questions such as: How many striking
teachers could be paid salaries with the money that is being
paid to weapons procurers and tunnel diggers? And has it not
been proven over the last six years that harming Israeli citizens
within the state's borders only strengthens public support for
their government's policy of occupation? The Palestinian weapons
mimics are finding themselves on the same side of the barricade
as the Israeli security establishment, both of which are inflating
the significance of Palestinian arms.
Whenever Israeli military officials
report on the dangers awaiting us from the Palestinian side,
they are aided by three phenomena. First, in Israel, information
from military sources about Palestinians (unlike information
about the recent war in Lebanon or other generals' wars) is considered
neutral, driven not by any personal or group interests but by
purely patriotic motives and concern for the good of the nation.
Second, a significant percentage of Israelis simply forget their
rich military experience. Everyone--including current and former
combat soldiers and their families--turns into a naive civilian
convinced by the television images of masked gunmen running around
besieged Palestinian cities that "the other side is a warmonger"
(and we are peace seekers).
Finally, in contrast to Palestinian
weaponry, which is quantifiable, it is impossible to quantify
the amount of "explosives" in Israel's hands--all the
different types of shells and bombs, all the weapons that Israeli
soldiers use or will use. The IDF Spokesman's Office does not
volunteer that information, but in any case, the quantities are
enormous, and they are constantly being restocked, whether through
imports or through the flourishing Israeli arms industry. Before
the recent war in Lebanon, did anyone calculate how many millions
of cluster bombs Israel had in its warehouses (of which 1.2 million
were fired during the war, as Meron Rapoport reported in this
newspaper on September 12)?
And therefore, what exists
in Israelis' consciousness is not the millions of cluster bombs--that
is, the flying mines--or the tens of millions of bombs and shells
and lethal bullets stored in our arms warehouses and our gun
barrels and the bellies of our helicopters and planes. Although
the amount of such explosives is measured in the millions of
tons, it is the 20 tons of explosives and the few thousand rifles
that permeate the Israeli consciousness.
Israelis are convinced that
we are facing an existential danger. But what has been erased
from the Israeli consciousness is that Israel is a weapons superpower,
and that the weapons this state has, as is the nature of all
weapons, are lethal and frightening.
The Israeli media, of course,
cooperates with this distortion of reality. It devoutly reports
every shot fired by the Palestinians and every rocket they launch--even
when they cause no harm. But Israeli bullets and shells, which
are fired routinely, do not exist in the media unless there are
fatalities, and even those are quickly forgotten.
The purpose of instilling such
fear in Israelis is to win ongoing support for the IDF's policy
of constant escalation. The security establishment is not neutral.
Its members, no less than bureaucrats in any other system, want
to perpetuate the rationale for their existence and their salaries.
They need public silence about the free use the IDF makes of
the weapons and ammunition that it puts into its soldiers' hands.
This serial intimidation is meant to give the IDF a free hand
while it expands its operational infrastructure, perhaps to the
point of using thousands of cluster bombs on Gaza, too.
The military establishment
in Israel is joined at the hip with the political decision-making
establishment, and hyping the security threat facing Israelis,
while completely disengaging from the reality of the Israeli
occupation, assures continued Israeli support for the myth that
there is a military "solution" but not a political
one. This in turn provides support for the ongoing regime of
occupation and dispossession, and for the privileges that this
bestows on Israelis.
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