Scott Ritter: Why I No Longer Stand with Israel, and Never Will Again (1)
The Gates of Gaza
“The attackers came at dawn, quickly occupying the town. The men were separated from the women and shot. One of the attackers, opening the door of one of the homes, found an old man standing there. He shot him. ‘He enjoyed shooting him,’ an eyewitness to the attack said afterwards.
Soon the town was empty—the entire population of 5,000 had either been killed or expelled, those who survived put on trucks, and driven to Gaza. The empty homes were looted. ‘We were very happy,’ one of the participants said afterwards. ‘If you don’t take it, someone else will. You don’t feel you have to give it back. They were not coming back’.”
It sounds like a narrative torn from the front pages of recent newspapers, one of many such stories—too many to count—describing the atrocities inflicted on the civilian populations of Israeli towns and Kibbutzes adjacent to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
But it is not. Instead, it is the recollection of Yaakov Sharett, the son of Moshe Sharett, one of the fathers of Israel, a signatory to Israel’s Declaration of Independence, and Israel’s first Foreign Minister, and second Prime Minister. Yaakov Sharett was recounting the seizure of the Arab town of Bersheeba, in 1948, by Israeli soldiers, during Israel’s War of Independence.
As a young soldier serving in the Negev Desert in 1946, Sharett was appointed mukhtar—or chief—of one of eleven teams of soldiers—part of the secret “11-Points Plan” designed to establish Jewish outposts in the Negev Desert that would serve as a strategic foothold in the region when the anticipated war between Israeli Zionists and Arabs broke out.
Zionism, as it existed before 1948, was a movement for the re-establishment of a Jewish nation on the territory of Biblical Israel. It was established as a political movement, Zionist Organization, in 1897 under the leadership of Theodor Herzl. Herzl died in 1904, and the Zionist Organization was later taken over by Chaim Weizmann as a reward for pushing for the adoption of the Balfour Declaration, which committed the British government to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Weitzman remained as the head of the Zionist Organization until the establishment of Israel in 1948, after which he was elected as Israel’s first President.
In 1946, a United Nations partition plan dividing the British Palestinian mandate into Arab and Jewish sections had apportioned the Negev region to the Arabs. The Zionist leaders of the future state of Israel, led by David Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, and others dedicated to the principles of Zionism, devised the “11-Points Plan” as a means to alter the status quo then in existence in the Negev, where 500 Jews in three outposts lived amongst 250,000 Arabs residing in 247 villages and towns. The 11 new outposts would boost the Israeli presence in the Negev, creating the condition where, as Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi noted, “an indigenous majority living on their ancestral soil” would be “converted overnight into a minority under alien rule.”
On the night of October 5, 1946—just after Yom Kippur—Yaakov led his team into the Negev.
“I remember when we found our piece of land on the top of a barren hill,” Yaakov recounted. “It was still dark, but we managed to bang in the posts and soon, we were inside our fence. At first light, trucks came with prefabricated barracks. It was quite a feat. We worked like devils.”
When Yaakov was part of the Zionist Youth Movement, he would travel throughout the Negev on foot, familiarizing himself with the Arab villages, and learning their Hebrew names as they existed in the Bible. Next to Yaakov’s hilltop settlement, which became the Hatzerim Kibbutz, was an Arab village named Abu Yahiya. One of the missions given the Kibbutzniks of Hatzerim was to collect intelligence on the local Arabs that would be used by Israeli military planners who were at the time preparing for the large-scale expulsion of the Arabs from the Negev.
The Arabs of Abu Yahiya provided Yaakov and his fellow Zionists with fresh water and would often guard the property of the Kibbutz while the men were away on work. There was an understanding between the leaders of Abu Yahia and the Hatzerim Kibbutz that they would be allowed to remain once Israel took control of the Negev. Instead, when war came, the Kibbutzniks from Hatzerim turned on their Arab neighbors, killing them and driving the survivors away from their homes forever.
Most of the survivors ended up living in Gaza.
The slaughter and physical eradication of the village of Abu Yahiya, the town of Bersheeba, and the 245 other Arab towns and villages in the Negev by Israeli settlers and soldiers has gone down in history as the Nakba, or “Catastrophe.” The Palestinians, when speaking of the Nakba, do not only address the events of 1948, but everything that has transpired since then in the name of the post-1948 sustainment, expansion, and defense of Zionism that defines modern-day Israel. Israelis do not talk about the Nakba, instead referring to the events of 1948 as their “War of Independence.”
“Silence on the Nakba,” one contemporary scholar on the subject has observed, “is also part of everyday life in Israel.”
After the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948, a group of Jewish settlers approached Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, requesting that the men from their settlements be allowed to serve in the military as a group. The result was the creation of the Nahal program, which combined military service with agricultural work. The Nahal forces would form a garrison, which would then be transformed into a Kibbutz, which would serve as the first line of defense against any future Arab attack on Israel. In 1951, the very first of these Nahal settlements, Nahlayim Mul Aza, was established on the border with the Gaza Strip. More followed, as the Nahal project sought to surround Gaza with these fortress-settlements. In 1953, Nahlayim Mul Aza made its transition from a military outpost to civilian Kibbutz and was renamed Nahal Oz.
One of the first settlers in Nahal Oz was a man named Roi Ruttenberg. At the age of 13, he served as a messenger boy during the 1948 War of Independence. When he turned 18, in 1953, he enlisted in the IDF, and then went on to get his commission. His first job as an officer was to serve as the security officer for Nahal Oz. He was married, and in 1956 was the proud father of an infant son. On April 18, 1956, Roi was ambushed by Arabs, who killed him and took his body into Gaza. His body was returned after the UN intervened, and he was buried the next day, on April 19. Roi’s death had enraged the Israeli nation, and thousands gathered for his funeral service.
Moshe Dyan, the Israeli Chef of Staff, was in attendance, and delivered a eulogy which has gone down in Israeli history as one of the defining speeches of the nation. “Early yesterday morning,” Dyan began, his voice carrying over the crowd of mourners, “Roi was murdered. The quiet of the spring morning dazzled him and he did not see those waiting in ambush for him, at the edge of the furrow.
Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we declare their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and the villages where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate.
It is not among the Arabs in Gaza, but in our own midst that we must seek Roi’s blood. How did we shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at our fate, and see, in all its brutality, the destiny of our generation? Have we forgotten that this group of young people dwelling at Nahal Oz is bearing the heavy gates of Gaza on its shoulders?
Beyond the furrow of the border, a sea of hatred and desire for revenge is swelling, awaiting the day when serenity will dull our path, for the day when we will heed the ambassadors of malevolent hypocrisy who call upon us to lay down our arms.
Roi’s blood is crying out to us and only to us from his torn body. Although we have sworn a thousandfold that our blood shall not flow in vain, yesterday again we were tempted, we listened, we believed.
We will make our reckoning with ourselves today; we are a generation that settles the land and without the steel helmet and the canon’s maw, we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home. Let us not be deterred from seeing the loathing that is inflaming and filling the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who live around us. Let us not avert our eyes lest our arms weaken.
This is the fate of our generation. This is our life’s choice—to be prepared and armed, strong, and determined, lest the sword be stricken from our fist and our lives cut down.
The young Roi who left Tel Aviv to build his home at the gates of Gaza to be a wall for us was blinded by the light in his heart and he did not see the flash of the sword. The yearning for peace deafened his ears and he did not hear the voice of murder waiting in ambush. The gates of Gaza weighed too heavily on his shoulders and overcame him.”
The speech is notable for its open recognition of the hatred of Israel on the part of the Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza, as well as the source of their hatred, and understanding regarding the legitimacy of the Palestinian emotions.
But it is also unapologetic about the righteousness of the Israeli cause, regardless of the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. Israel, Dyan said, cannot be settled without the “steel helmet and canon’s maw.” War, he said, was Israel’s “life choice,” and as such Israel was condemned to a life of militarized diligence, “lest the sword be stricken from our fist and our lives cut down.”
As people reflect on the violence which took place on October 7, when hundreds of heavily armed Hamas fighters surged out of Gaza and fell upon the military outposts and Kibbutzes that surrounded Gaza, they should never forget the origins and purpose of these installations—to literally pen the population of Gaza into what is in effect an open-air concentration camp, and the emotions produced amongst the Arab population imprisoned there. The Israelis who lived, worked and served in these encampments bore “the heavy gates of Gaza” on their shoulders, laboring under the “burning hatred” of a people forced to sit in refugee camps while, before their eyes, the settlers in the surrounding Kibbutzes transformed “the lands and the villages where they and their fathers dwelt” into the Israeli Jewish homeland.
These Israelis all grasped the sword of Zionism firmly in their hands. None among the adults who lived and worked in these encampments can be considered innocent—they were part of a system—Zionism—whose very existence and sustainment demand the brutal imprisonment and subjugation of millions of Palestinians who had their homes stolen from them 75 years ago. They lived out their “fate,” as Moshe Dyan called it, with all its inherent brutality. The “heavy gates of Gaza” was the destiny of their generation, until, like Roi Ruttenberg before them, the gates weighed too heavily of their shoulders and overcame them.
Never Quit
There was a time when I counted myself as a friend of Israel. I had campaigned during Operation Desert Storm to prevent Iraqi SCUD missiles from being launched against Israel, and, from 1994 until 1998, I travelled extensively to Israel, where I worked with the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) intelligence organization, AMAN, to make sure Iraq would never again be able to threaten Israel with either SCUD missiles carrying conventional high explosive, chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads. I briefed Israeli generals, diplomats, and politicians.
I worked long hours side-by-side with Israeli photographic interpreters, signals intelligence collectors, technical intelligence analysts, and human intelligence case officers as we made sure no stone was left unturned when it came to making sure all of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities were fully and verifiably accounted for. I was struck by the amazing work ethic and innate intelligence of my Israeli counterparts. I was also impressed by their integrity, as they more than lived up to their promise of adhering to the mandate set forth by the United Nations Security Council when it came to the work myself and my fellow inspectors from the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) were doing in Iraq.
By the time I left UNSCOM, in August 1998, I counted myself as a genuine friend of Israel (there was a downside to this relationship—the FBI was investigating me for alleged violations of the espionage act, an investigation that did not end until after September 11, 2001, when, after an interview between myself and three FBI agents, the investigation was closed.)
I need to admit to more than a little ambivalence regarding Israel growing up—I was not a natural fan. My first recollection of Israel was the Yom Kippur War, in October 1973, and being mesmerized by the reports I saw on television. Later, in 1976, I was similarly captured by the audacity and heroism behind the Entebbe rescue. But this childhood infatuation faded when I attended college. Between an American-Israeli roommate who had just finished his service in the IDF (I had just finished my service in the US Army, and was enrolled in a Marine Corps commissioning program, and could not fathom why an American citizen would—or even could—serve in the armed forces of another nation), and a very active on-campus Hillel (Jewish student) organization, I became offended by the zero tolerance that existed amongst many American Jews toward Palestine and the Arab world in general.
I was deeply influenced by Professor John B. Joseph, an Assyrian-American historian of Middle Eastern studies. The son of refugees from the Assyrian genocide in pre-Iran Persia, Professor Joseph was born and raised in Baghdad. The open-consciousness with which he taught courses on Arab-Israeli relationships contrasted starkly with the my-way-or-the-highway approach taken by Hillel. On one occasion, in the Spring of 1983, Hillel sponsored a delegation of Israeli soldiers to visit the campus, where they gave talks on the Israeli invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon. I was enrolled in the Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Course and was scheduled to be commissioned upon graduation in May 1984.
A confrontation between a US Marine and three IDF tanks in February 1983 had made headlines around the world. The tanks, commanded by an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel, had tried to drive through the Marine position. Captain Charles B. Johnson, the officer in charge of a Marine unit assigned to keep the Israelis from entering Beirut, had stood in front of the tanks, telling the IDF officer that they would not be allowed to pass. When the tanks threatened to run him over, Captain Johnson drew his pistol, jumped up onto the lead Israeli tank, and told the Lieutenant Colonel they would do so over his dead body. The Israelis backed down.
The standoff outside Beirut led to tensions between the US and Israel, with the State Department calling in the Israeli charge d’affaires, Benjamin Netanyahu, to protest Israeli provocation. Bad blood ensued, with the Israelis spreading rumors that Captain Johnson’s breath smelled of alcohol.
This rumor was repeated by one of the IDF soldier-ambassadors at an on-campus talk I attended. I took umbrage and rose to my feet to challenge the speaker. In a not-so-diplomatic manner, I reminded the IDF soldier that he was on US soil, in the presence of a US Marine, and I would be damned if I were going to let him smear the reputation of a Marine Corps officer in my presence. Sensing the violence inherent in my words (I already had a reputation on campus for roughing up a fellow student who had wished John Hinckley, the would-be assassin of President Ronald Reagan, had been a better shot), the Hillel organizers intervened, and ushered the IDF soldier off the stage, and off the campus.
My next interaction with Israel came, indirectly, during Operation Desert Storm. While the mission of US forces was to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi military, the firing of modified SCUD missiles into Israel by Iraq threatened to bring Israel into the conflict, an act that would have caused the coalition of nations, which consisted of numerous Arab nations who would refuse to fight on the same side as Israel, that had been so carefully cobbled together by President George H. W. Bush, to fall apart. Stopping the Iraqi SCUD launches became the top priority of the war and, as the resident SCUD expert on General Norman Schwarzkopf’s staff, I became heavily involved in this effort. (As I reminded an openly hostile audience member during a 2007 presentation before a major American Jewish organization, I was putting my ass on the line for Israel when he and other American Jews were buying tickets to escape the Holy Land.)
After the war I was recruited by UNSCOM to help create an independent intelligence capability in support of the United Nations mission in Iraq. In 1994 I proposed that UNSCOM open a secret channel with Israel to closely coordinate on intelligence issues related to the disarmament of Iraq. My proposal was approved, and I helped lead the first UNSCOM delegation sent to Israel, where we met with the Director of AMAN and the Chief of the Research and Analysis Division (RAD) to discuss the scope and scale of UNSCOM-Israeli intelligence cooperation.
During my first visit to Israel, in October 1994, I was introduced to an Israeli Air Force intelligence officer who became my principal interlocutor for the next four years. Our professional relationship was exquisite—there is no doubt that without this officer, whose energy, intellect, and experience were second to none, made the UNSCOM-Israeli relationship the success it was. What struck me the most about this man, whom I came to view as a friend as well as colleague, was how much he wanted me to understand and appreciate Israel—the real Israel, not the made-for-TV propaganda show that Israel is known for when it comes to influencing foreigners like me.
Yes, I was given the helicopter tour of Israel so that I could see from a bird’s eye view how small and vulnerable the nation of Israel was. Yes, the helicopter landed at Masada, where I was educated on the tragedy of that period in Israeli history. Yes, I was driven up to the Golan Heights, to a forward observation post, where I could view Syrian Army positions through a telescope—all of this is true. But my Israeli host noted sagely that what I was really interested in was the “SCUD museum,” where Israel had assembled the debris from all the SCUD missiles that had fallen on its soil during Operation Desert Storm. This interested me because it was my mission.
Falling in love with Israel was not.
Read the second part of the article
Author: Scott Ritter, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer
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November 15, 2023