Dershowtiz - Terror tunnels: the case for israels just war against hamas

Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israels Just War Against Hamas
Copyright 2014 by Alan Dershowitz

Many chapters in this book were originally written and published as op-eds in various publications. Where this is the case, the date of original publication is given below the chapter title.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. For information, please contact RosettaBooks at production@rosettabooks.com, or by mail at One Exchange Plaza, Suite 2002, 55 Broadway, New York, NY 10006.

First edition published 2014 by RosettaBooks
Cover design by Peter Clark. Cover photo by Ziv Koren / Polaris.
ISBN EPUB edition: 9780795344282

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This book is dedicated to all the innocent victims of Hamass dead baby strategyPalestinians and Israelis alike. It is also dedicated to the brave Israeli soldiers who gave their lives in an effort to protect these civilians.

Contents

Acknowledgments

This book was originally stimulated by my visit to a Hamas terror tunnel that was arranged by my dear friend and go-to guy in Israel, Danny Grossman. I was accompanied by two other dear friends, Tom Ashe and Dr. Michael Miller, who, along with their spouses, Joanne and Alisa, helped me develop this book. My wonderful wife, Carolyn, who also accompanied me to the tunnel, provided her usual support, encouragement, and insight. Our tunnel visit was enabled and personally guided by R, a high ranking figure in the Israel Security Agency, which quietly fights for Israels defense around the clock. I also acknowledge the assistance of Sarah Neely, Nicholas Maisel, Stella Frank, my son Elon, and the gang from the porch.

Introduction

On June 13, 2014, the commander of the southern region for the Israel Security Agency (ISA), together with the commander of the Gaza Division of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), took me into a Hamas tunnel that had recently been discovered by a Bedouin tracker who serves in the IDF. The tunnel was a concrete bunker that extended several miles from its entrance in the Gaza Strip to its exit near an Israeli kibbutz kindergarten.

The tunnel had one purpose: to allow Hamas death squads to kill and kidnap Israelis. The commander told me that Israeli intelligence had identified more than two dozen additional tunnel entrances in the Gaza Strip. They had been identified by the large amounts of earth being removed to dig them. Although Israeli intelligence knew where these entrances were, they could not order an attack from the air, because they were built into civilian structures such as mosques, schools, hospitals, and private homes. Nor could Israel identify their underground routes from Gaza into Israel, or their intended exit points in Israel. Israeli scientists and military experts had spent millions of dollars in an effort to develop technologies that could find the underground routes and intended exits for tunnels that were as deep as a hundred feet beneath the earth, but they had not succeeded in finding a complete solution to this problem. The planned exits from these tunnels in Israel were also a Hamas secret, hidden deep in the ground and incapable of being discovered by Israel until the Hamas fighters emerged. At that point it would be too late to prevent the death squads from doing their damage.

I was taken into the tunnel and saw the technological innovations: tracks on which small trains could transport kidnapped Israelis back to Gaza; telephone and electrical lines; crevices beneath schools and other civilian targets that could hold explosives; and smaller offshoot tunnels leading from the main tube to numerous exit points from which fighters could simultaneously emerge from different places.

As soon as I went down into the tunnel, I realized that Israel would have no choice but to take military action to destroy them. Israel had a technological responsethough imperfectto Hamas rockets. Its Iron Dome was capable of destroying approximately 85 percent of Hamas rockets fired at its population centers.

To me, the only questions were when Israel would act, how it would act, whether it would be successful, and what the consequences would be. Could any nation tolerate this kind of threat to its citizens? Has any nation in history ever allowed tunnels to be dug under its border which would permit death squads to operate against its people?

I discussed these issues with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a dinner in his home several days after my visit to the tunnel, and it became clear that the Israeli government had been concerned about the security threats posed by these terror tunnels ever since the tunnels were used to kidnap the young soldier Gilad Shalit and kill two of his compatriots.

Ironically, it was while we were in the tunnel that we learned that three Israeli high school students had been kidnapped. Their kidnapping, which Hamas subsequently acknowledged was done by its operatives, and their murder, was the beginning of what turned into Operation Protective Edge, which ended with the destruction of most of the tunnels. This book is about that operation and why Israel was justifiedlegally, morally, diplomatically, and politicallyin responding to the dangers posed by the tunnels and the rocket attacks that preceded and followed their discovery. It is also about why so many in the media, academia, the international community, and the general public seem to blind themselves to the dangers posed by Hamas and blame Israel for actions they would demand their own governments take , were they faced with comparable threats.

Indeed, the United States is now leading a coalition of nations in an effort to destroy ISIS, employing many of the same military tactics for which some of these nations blamed Israel.

I believe that the blame Israel reaction has serious consequences, not only for Israel but for the people of Gaza, and for the democratic world in general. Blaming Israel only encourages Hamas to repeat its dead baby strategy and other terrorist groups to emulate it. This strategy, which has worked effectively, operates as follows: Hamas attacks Israel either by rockets or through tunnels, thereby forcing Israel to respond, as any democracy would do, to protect its citizens. Because Hamas fires its rockets and digs its tunnels from densely populated civilian areas, rather than from the many open areas of the Gaza Strip, the inevitable result is that a significant number of Palestinian civilians are killed. Hamas encourages this result, because it knows the media will focus more on the photographs of dead babies than on the cause of their death: namely, the decision by Hamas to use these babies and other civilians as human shields. Hamas quickly produces the dead babies to be shown around the world, while at the same time preventing the media from showing its rocket launchers and tunnels in densely populated areas. The world is outraged at the dead civilians and blames Israel for killing them. This only encourages Hamas to repeat its dead baby strategy following short cease-fires, during which they rearm and regroup.

In 2009, I published a short book entitled The Case for Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza . Very little has changed since that time, except that Hamas has built many more tunnels, and that the reach and sophistication of its rockets has increased.

I am writing this book to warn the world that unless Hamass dead baby strategy is denounced and stoppedby the international community, the media, the academy, and good people of all religions, ethnicities, and nationalitiesit will be coming to a theater near you. Hamas repeatedly employs this despicable and unlawful strategy because it works ! It works because despite the material losses Hamas suffers in its repeated military encounters with Israel, it always wins the public relations war, the legal war, the academic war, and the war for the nave hearts, if not the wise minds, of young people. And if it is indeed winning these warsif its dead baby strategy is workingwhy not repeat it every few years? Thats why cease-fires between Israel and Hamas always mean that Israel ceases and Hamas firesperhaps not immediately, while it regroups and rearms, but inevitably. And if it works for Hamas, why shouldnt other terrorist groups, like ISIS and Boko Haram, adapt this strategy to their nefarious goals, as Hezbollah has already done?