(Fwd) Letter to a Pilot - Avnery answers the Air Force Commander

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/

------- Forwarded message follows -------
From:           	"Uri Avnery" <avnery at actcom.co.il>

Hi,
I hope the attached will interest you.
Latest developments:
Gush Shalom has submitted an official complaint to the army Chief 
Advocate against the commander of the Air Force and others 
concerning this action.
The government Attorney General is still looking for grounds to indict 
us.
Salamaat, Shalom,
uri

 
Letter to a Pilot
  Uri Avnery - 24.8.02
  
       I have read the interview given by your commander, Major General Dan Halutz, 
and, like many others in Israel and abroad, I  was shocked.
       On July 23, one of your comrades (or perhaps you yourself?)   dropped a one-ton 
bomb on a house in a dense residential   neighborhood in Gaza. The aim was to 
execute, without trial,   Salah Shehadeh,  a Hamas activist. Apart from him, 16 
neighbors,   including 11 children, were killed. Tens of other men, women and   
children were wounded.
       In school you certainly learned the words of the famous poem   by Bialik, the 
national poet, "Even Satan has not invented the   revenge of a little child." I assumed 
that you are torn by doubt   after this act, that you look at your children and tell 
yourself:   "Children are children. How are their children responsible for the   situation?"
       And here comes your commander and says that you have no  pangs of 
conscience, none whatsoever. I don't know whether he is telling the truth or slandering 
you. 
       The general says that he told you: "Your execution was   perfect...You did 
exactly what you were told to do...You did not   deviate one inch left or right...You have 
no problem."
       Those who do have problems with this action and protest   against it (like myself) 
are called by the general "bleeding   hearts...a insignificant and vociferous minority..." 
He accuses us   of "daring to use methods of mafia-style blackmail against   
fighters...treason is forbidden...a paragraph must be found in the   law in order to put 
them to trial in Israel...(this) reminds me of dark   time of the Jewish people, when a 
minority amongst us informed   against other Jews."  He also condemns "the 
obsession of some   journalists...they are bored...so they jump..."
       These extreme utterances do not testify to the mental   tranquility of the general, 
who says that he has "a deep feeling of   justice and morality." I would say that on the 
head of the general,   the blue cap is burning.*  Each word betrays hysteria.  
       But the style must cause deep anxiety. The words would have   sounded natural if 
uttered by a general in Argentina or Chile   during the military dictatorship, or by a 
Turkish officer about to   topple the civilian government. When an Israeli general uses 
such   words against the media and civil society, a red light is turned on.   The more 
so since he was not summarily dismissed but, on the   contrary, publicly lauded. 
Israeli democracy is losing height.
       But I do not want to speak with you about Dan Halutz, but   about yourself.
       Who are you? What are you?
       One of the pilots explained to the interviewer, Vered Levy-  Barzilai: "(That) is the 
uniqueness and the beauty of the world of   the pilot. You sit up above, quietly, with 
your wide space. There   are no noises, no booms, no shouts of people. You are 
totally   focused on the target, you don't have the dirt and the horror of the   battlefield. 
You do your thing and head home." 
       Dan Halutz, too, describes his feelings thus: "If you really want   to know what I 
feel when I release a bomb, I will tell you: I feel a   slight bump to the plane as a result 
of the bomb's release. A   second later it's gone, and that's all. That's what I feel."
       "That's all." Down below horrible things happen, mutilated   bodies fly in the air, 
wounded human beings writhe in pain,   people buried under the debris utter their last 
groan, women   scream over the bodies of their children, a scene of hell, not   different 
from the scene of a suicide bombing - and "that's all". A   slight bump to the plane, 
and then home, to a warm shower and   bed.
       I must confess that it is hard for me to imagine this experience. I   did my combat 
service in the infantry, I saw who I was shooting at   and who was shooting at me; I 
could at any moment have been   wounded (as I was) and killed. It is difficult for me to 
imagine the   experience of a person up in the sky, sowing death and   destruction 
without being in any danger himself.
       Is this pilot - you! - afflicted by doubt? Does he sometimes   torment himself? 
Does he ask himself if a certain action is   permitted, moral, right? Or does he - you! - 
become a robot, a   "professional" who is proud of his perfect control over the   
awesome machine-of-death entrusted to him and of the "exact"   execution of his 
orders?
       I know that not all pilots are robots. I still see before my eyes   Colonel Yig'al 
Shohat reading from his paper, with a voice   trembling with emotion, his historic 
appeal to his fellow-pilots and   pupils in the Air Force to refuse manifestly illegal 
orders, such as   precisely this action in Gaza. Shohat, a war-hero who was shot   
down over Egypt and whose leg was amputated by an Egyptian   surgeon, is the exact 
opposite of Halutz.
       You must decide - to be a human being like Shohat, sensitive   to the suffering of 
others, or a robot like Halutz, who feels a slight   bump while he kills dozens of human 
beings.
       The Rules of War were born after the Thirty Years War, one of   the most horrible 
in the annals of Europe, a holocaust in which a   third of the German nation was wiped 
out and two thirds of   Germany laid waste. The international conventions are based on 
  the conviction that even in a hard war, when each side is fighting   for existence, the 
commandments of human morality must be kept.
       Don't make it easy for yourself by adopting the primitive   slogans of Halutz, who 
justifies everything by saying that   Shehadeh was "evil incarnate", words which betray 
his ultra-  rightist world-view. Shehadeh was not put on trial. None of his   alleged acts 
were proven. He certainly believed that he was   serving his people, as you believe that 
you are serving yours. But   even if it were proven that he was a dangerous enemy, this 
does   not justify in any way the killing of his neighbors. The argument   that this 
wholesale killing prevented the killing of Jews is not   valid. When the pilot released his 
bomb he knew for certain that   he was killing many people, while Shehadeh's ability to 
kill us was   only an assumption. On the other hand, it was certain that this   killing 
would lead to acts of revenge, and that much Jewish flood   would flow because of it. 
Furthermore, there is a hell of a   difference between a guerilla group and a mighty 
army acting on   behalf of a state.
       Under these circumstances, would you have told your   commander: "I refuse to 
fulfill this order, because it is manifestly   illegal?" Israeli law and human morality 
oblige you to do so. But   Dan Halutz says: "Refusal to perform a sortie is not part of 
the   rules of my game."
       What about the rules of y o u r game?
  
*An allusion to the Jewish adage: "On the head of the thief, the hat is burning," 
meaning that his behavior discloses his guilt.