Israel’s Assault on Gaza Angers Asian Public, Numbs Supporters
| WRMEA Archives 2006-2010 - 2009 April |
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2009, pages 28-29
Islam and the Near East in the Far East
Israel’s Assault on Gaza Angers Asian Public, Numbs Supporters
By John Gee
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IN HIS TELEVISION broadcast upon the end of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip in January, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “The campaign has proven Israel’s power and strengthened its deterrence.”
There is reason to think that this was a central goal for the Israeli government when it decided to launch the war. Certainly, the official excuse that Israel had to defend its citizens from Hamas rocket fire does not stand up to scrutiny. The Israeli government could have tried to extend the existing six-month cease-fire that had been largely successful in stopping attacks from the Gaza Strip, but chose not to do so.
Prior to that, on the night of Nov. 4, an Israeli military attack resulted in the deaths of six Palestinians alleged to be Hamas militants. Israel said it believed they were about to undertake a major attack, and so launched a “pre-emptive strike.” Had Hamas excused a breach of the cease-fire by making a similar claim against Israel, it is easy to imagine the derision and outrage that would have greeted such a claim—yet the Israeli action attracted little condemnation at the time.
Retaliatory rocket fire by Hamas militants then became the excuse for a desired offensive that had been carefully planned.
Certainly, Israel hoped to undermine support for Hamas through the destruction it imposed on Gazans, but, since the military failure against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, re-establishing the power of the army in the eyes of Israel’s public and its enemies alike has been an obsession for Israeli leaders. Judging by Olmert’s comments on the outcome of the conflict, the offensive against Hamas stood in for another war in Lebanon.
Rarely in modern times has a reaction such as the smug satisfaction displayed by Israel’s political leaders at the end of the attack been so unjustified. Pounding Gaza from a safe distance and only committing soldiers to ground fighting up to the point when they were most likely to encounter Palestinian fighters at close quarters did not enhance respect for the fighting prowess of the army among its enemies or the detached. The odds in the conflict were so uneven that Israel simply looked like a big bully to most of the world.
This was the case in East and Southeast Asia. In predominantly Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia, this was to be expected, of course, but public sentiment in China, Japan and South Korea was predominantly unfavorable to Israel—at least to the extent that anyone could spare time from thinking about the economic slowdown. Scenes of the devastation caused by the Israeli assault and of the large number of civilian casualties left the already critical angry, and the usually sympathetic numbed.
The latter reaction was most notable. In Singapore, letter writers and columnists who in 2006 wrote sympathetically of Israel’s actions against Hezbollah had nothing to say this time around. The case for the war was represented in the media by Israeli writers and articles by pro-Israel Western correspondents. The Israeli ambassador, Ilan Ben Dov, wrote an extraordinary piece (“Fulfilling a state’s moral obligation”) in the Jan. 1 Straits Times.
“Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been subjected to almost daily attacks by Hamas’ Kasam rockets” in the past eight years, he wrote, ignoring the cease-fire during which a total of 18 rockets were fired by members of other groups and no Israelis were killed. A short article by Rashid Khalidi (“What you don’t know about Gaza,” Jan. 12 Straits Times), reprinted from The New York Times, effectively skewered a lot of the Israeli apologias—along with what the public could see for itself on the news.
During the conflict there were public demonstrations of 20,000 in Jakarta and 3,000 in Kuala Lumpur (a good turnout for Malaysia). A call to boycott Israeli and U.S. goods in Malaysia had a mixed reception, with some commentators saying that they didn’t see any Israeli goods to boycott and they could not do without many of the U.S. goods they bought.
Close Call
One Indonesian domestic worker, at least, had a close-up experience of the war, as she told the Jakarta Post of Feb. 2. Umi Saodah was promised a job in Jordan nine years ago, but her agency arranged for her to go to Gaza, without her consent. Her employer, a university professor, did not pay her for five years, and when she asked for the $15,000 due her, he accused her of stealing money and jewelery, and beat her until she confessed to the crime. She was then detained by the Palestinian police.
A Palestinian court found her not guilty of her employer’s charge, but Umi Saodah was still in prison when the Israeli assault began. The walls were blasted apart by Israeli warplanes. She pulled a fellow prisoner out of the rubble of their cell and hauled her along the street to try to find some medical help. Fortunately, an ambulance appeared and took them both to Shifa Hospital. After this, she spent three weeks with another Palestinian woman prisoner, moving from one house to another in search of a refuge from Israeli bombs, shells and bullets. It was the most she ever saw of Gaza, as her employer had not allowed her to go out of his house. She was eventually able to leave when the cease-fire took hold.
“I thought I would never be able to come back home. I really did,” Umi told the newspaper Jurnal Nasional of Jan. 28.
Unwanted Anywhere
Foreign tourists on a Thai beach were unpleasantly surprised when Thai navy guards forced a large group of people who had their hands tied to lie face down in the sun, and beat anyone who attempted to move. The guards waved away people who tried to take photographs of what they saw, but one tourist was successful, and sent the results to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, which published them.
This incident took place on Dec. 23, 2008. The detainees were 93 Rohingya refugees fleeing from Myanmar or Bangladesh. The Rohingyas are an 800,000-strong Muslim minority whose homeland is Myanmar, but whom the military regime adamantly refuses to recognize as citizens and bans them from owning property. Repression made many flee across the border into Bangladesh, where some have lived wretchedly in refugee camps since their arrival in 1992. (See Jan./Feb. 2008 Washington Report, p. 26.)
Over the following weeks, the true extent of the Rohingya migration became clearer. Dead bodies were washed up on beaches in India’s Andaman Islands. After 107 refugees were rescued from a drifting boat by the Indian coast guard, they said there originally had been 412 people on board. When they approached the Thai coast, the Thai navy forced them back out to sea. Sixty-six detained Rohingyas, barefoot and wearing rags, were sentenced to five days in prison by a Thai court on Jan. 28 when they were unable to pay a 1,000 baht fine for illegally entering Thailand; four were so ill they had to be brought from the hospital to face sentencing. At the beginning of February, 198 were picked up by the Indonesian navy. They reported that 22 of their companions had died.
The refugees hoped to escape from the intolerable conditions in Myanmar and Bangladesh and earn a living in Thailand—or, rather, Malaysia, which Thailand-based traffickers would facilitate. Those who reach Malaysia face all the risks that go with being undocumented in a foreign country, as well as harassment from the notorious volunteer reserve force, Rela. There have been frequent claims that Rela extorts money from undocumented workers in return for allowing them to stay, and that those it sends back to the Thai border often end up returning to Kuala Lumpur and other localities with a debt to their traffickers that they are told they must work off.
It is a sad fact is that no country in the region is willing to take them in, even those that are ready to temporarily provide those rescued on the high seas with food and water. Thailand’s new prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajjiva, has called for a regional approach to tackling the issue. Rohingyas who left their country dread that this will provide an excuse for many of them to be turned over to the Myanmar military regime.
John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Southeast Asia, and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.
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