By Shmuel Amir

8 January 2009

Upon the launching of the attack on Gaza, Ehud Barak struck the pose of Julius Caesar, who announced with his crossing of the Rubicon that “the die is cast”, and declared “combat has begun”. The question begged is, which combat exactly? Two sides are needed in order for there to be a war, as we all know; but here in Gaza, are there two sides to the bombing of Gaza from the air? On one side is there not an air force equipped with the best aircraft provided by its “friend”, the USA, while on the other side are completely defenceless people facing heavy bombardment that rains down on them from the heavens? Is there such a thing as a war in which only one side is fighting? Therefore the combat that Israeli Defence Minister Barak announced is not a war but a hunt! A hunt for humans who lack the minimal means to resist and who are slaughtered from the air. A hunt for sitting ducks. I recall the romantic films that we used to watch back in the day, in which two adversaries would fight with swords. When to one of them, even the evil one, lost his sword, his adversary would return his sword to him so as to avoid killing a defenceless man. That’s how it was in the movies. In the reality of today, one side stands without a sword in the face of an enemy armed from head to toe and they call it “war”. The war in Gaza in our day looks a lot more like a massacre.

The first air attack began on 27 December. It lasted 4 minutes over the course of which 200 people were killed. The second wave of attacks came a few minutes later. Until the ground invasion about 400 Palestinians were killed and 4 Israelis were killed by qassam missiles. The sum total so far indicates more than 500 killed Palestinians as against 5 Israelis killed. The number of Palestinian wounded is about 2,500, whereas on the Israeli side the number of wounded is estimated to be 50. These numbers tell the story of the unequal “Gaza war”.