Following LP’s earlier posts on the Lebanese war below, by Shaun and Mark, it appears necessary for a small update and to stitch together some loose ends in the “Great Game” of the Middle East, currently being played out, to predict likely consequences up to the American mid-term elections in November.
Diplomacy to settle the present conflict in Lebanon; ceasefires and messy compromises may possibly begin within a week, but this represents in a way, merely history repeating itself, with the exception of the ferocity and level of damage to Lebanon. Opportunity has knocked. A by-product of the conflict has arrived, and produced a new brighter windfall trigger allowing bigger fish to be fried by both the USA and Israel, namely Iran. Perceived or actual Iranian participation in Hezbollah’s acts, and supply of aid and allegedly missiles to Hezbollah is what I refer to as the “Lebanese trigger” giving another rationale for the end game of Neo-con and Likudnik policy: to erase the perceived Iranian threat once and for all. Like John Howard with double dissolution triggers, the more the better.
There are two main assumptions necessary for the “Lebanese trigger” to unfold.
In a radio interview (18/07/06) with both Robert Fisk and ex CIA analyst Ray McGovern respectively, their commentary on Syria/Israel/Lebanon and the nexus of Neo-cons/Israel/Iran is highly persuasive and confirms my view that the USA will nuke Iran before the mid-term elections, or at the very least use tactical nuclear weapons in response to Iranian counter-attacks (into Iraq) resulting from a conventional bombing attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure.
The first assumption is that Iran will delay, become or be labelled intransigent to the current deal on the table to pre-conditionally cease uranium enrichment and accept a package of trade and other advantages in return for a permanent cessation of enrichment, even for low grade fuel applicable to nuclear power stations. I think that assumption will hold, firstly the chances of Iranian agreement are highly problematic to the pre-condition itself, but if Iran accepts the pre-condition, it would provide an additional but delayed trigger for US pre-emptive action should Iran start up enrichment in breach of that pre-condition. In Iranian terms, not a good deal: “First I give you my gun, then you shoot me with your howitzer when I try to get another gun.” Secondly there should be ample opportunity for the US to manufacture, if necessary, some form of Iranian intransigence during the main negotiations, to which the Lebanese trigger would then be applied. Manufacturing Iranian “intransigence” should be easier than “manufacturing” Saddam’s WMD in Iraq.
Firstly to Robert Fisk, who reports that Israel is now engaging in economic attacks, ie a milk factory, a carton box factory along with a fleet of new ambulances have been deliberately destroyed in recent days. The more interesting observation is that Syria is playing a rather dirty game of sour grapes:
Fisk:
Syria has been humiliated by being forced to retreat from Lebanon under the terms of of UNSC Resolution 1559. This is Syria’s way of saying to the world, “Right, you may love Lebanon, you may love your Lebanese democracy, you may think Lebanon makes its own decisions, but we decide on the events,” and indeed they do…This is a cynical vicious thing to say and I think its true, is that this is intended to get the EU and UN and [another unintelligable--presumably the US] to go to Damascus and ask President Assad to use his quote influence unquote, to end the war, and that I’m sure is what will happen….
As for American efforts to do something about restraining the Israelis:
Bush’s performance in St Petersberg was gutless, cowardly, pusillanimous, ridiculous. It wasn’t the leader of a superpower, it was a leader of a country who is too frightened to take on Israel, frankly.
Ray McGovern asks if Americans want gas at $6, $8 or $10 a gallon, they’re in for a real treat with war waged on Iran. The struggle for the Bush administration is in contemplating the downside in having gas at these levels just before the House elections. This is the conversation McGovern believes the movers and shakers in the Bush administration, namely Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have had, or are having, with Bush in the Oval Office, (presumably with the tape recorders switched off):
McGovern re Rummy Rove and Cheney:
Mr President, our numbers are way down, we need to do something before November, [because] if the Democrats take the House, we are in deep doodah. You know that John Conyers fellow, he’s going to start impeachment proceedings. We gonna have two years of being investigated and there’s some personal liability here, because y’know there’s that US War Crimes Act which ties everything to Geneva….We have to do something, and we have to do something pretty startling.
Now there are a lot of risks in this, we don’t know if we can contain a war with Iran, but what the heck if those blue suiters [US Airforce] are right in saying we can surgically strike, we could take out those weapons. Well we’d be doing Israel a big favour and that always plays well in this country, and y’know there’s a chance we can contain it until at least after the election.
And where will that put you Mr President? That will put you in the position of a war president again and being able to say hey, please electorate, please don’t pull the rug out from underneath me when I’m involved in a wider war here. Please do not elect a Congress that will circumscribe my freedom of action. Please, please, vote Republican in November.
When can we be warned that this is all going to happen? McGovern says when the Wall Street Journal and Fox news starts a blitz of repeated claims that Iran was behind the kidnapping incursion into Israel, that Iranian missiles are the ones hitting Israel, that Iranians were directly involved in shelling Israeli vessels: that’s when it will be close at hand.
My last assumption is this, that Rumsfeld, Rove and Cheney will convince Bush to save himself and prevent a Republican electoral wipeout by attacking Iran at an advantageous time, just before the House elections. But watch for the application of the Lebanese trigger, in large doses.
I only hope I’m wrong with at least one of those assumptions.
I would distinguish strongly between attacking Iran and nuking Iran.
The first is plausible, the second is highly unlikely in my view, mostly because it’s completely f*&^%*g insane to a standard that not even Bush and Cheney have demonstrated.
Could you imagine the reaction in Australia? The public outrage would be such that even Howard would probably be forced to impose trade sanctions. Every US embassy in the world would face huge mass protests. American businesses the world over would face for-real boycotts.
Robert, The public outrage would be such that even Howard would probably be forced to impose trade sanctions.
You sure about that? It would nullify a century of Australian foreign policy practice, not to mention the ANZUS document with which successive Au governments have placed full faith of Australian security in. There are also US bases in Australia.
Howard would be left no choice but to do as Australia has always done, and back the US to the hilt.
Our policies have left us without options.
Peter:
Excellent post.
It’s my wild guess that it will be in the overall interests of Iran. of Hizbollah, of Syria, of Russian and of the herd of unnoticed elephants in the room, China, to have the United States, already enmired in Iraq, become involved in the Israeli military adventure.
There’s a whole truckload of triggers to get the United States directly involved. In fact, no matter what the Bush bunch want or plan, I can’t see any way that the U.S. can escape from becoming directly involved.
“confirms my view that the USA will nuke Iran before the mid-term elections, or at the very least use tactical nuclear weapons”
Mid term elections are this November aren’t they? The Americans will at the very least use tactical nuclear weapons before then?
Is anyone running a book on this? I’ve got a couple of bucks that say it won’t happen.
Yeah, I’m kinda with you on this on PeterTB. I think the plan is too squeeze as much surplus value out of oil in a shorter space of time. The more uncertainty the higher the price, the more profit for Bush and his oil company pals…
But then again I have been wrong before…
I am with Antony Cordesman on this one.
Israel wants to bring Iran in but there is no evidence to support them.
Sorry Peter, this post is baffling.
Why should the Americans attack Iran at all, let alone before elections?
I recall commenting on that epic conspiracy thread a while ago, that I understood the term ‘paranoid style’ to mean a form of thinking in which:
I think you’re falling into this trap a lot here. The Republican ‘neo-cons’ (whoever they are) aren’t an infinite power force and it does a discredit to the US system to imagine they are. You might consider that there are a few important and powerful groups who’ll agitate very strongly against a Syrian or Iranian war, including the US State Department, CIA and probably the military themselves, not to mention the Syrian and Iranian governments.
I don’t know about America, but Israel would certainly have more justification attacking either or both of the Iranians and the Syrians, as compared to the Lebanese.
Greg Sheridan moved away from the Israel supporting conservative pack today when he suggests an attack on Syria would have been justified, but not the type of attacks Israel are inflicting.
Gene at Harry’s Place is another leading conservative pundit starting to sound a bit panicky at the extent of Israel’s civilian targetting. Why did they target a dairy factory he asks?
Why indeed.
Yeah I forgot about the election coming up. All the more reason to squeeze as much as possible while they still have influence in Congress..
I don’t think a US invasion of Iran is likely anytime soon to be honest. The way in which the US has been tied up in Iraq is enough to keep them busy for now I think. Besides, if the US thinks it’s got it tough in Iraq, invade Iran and they’ll find a whole educated, mobilised and much larger Muslim population waiting for them to make the occupation phase a big fun “mission accomplished”…
But, with all that’s happened over the last 5 years, who knows? Seems any idiot can convince any other idiot to push the button these days.
“I don’t think a US invasion of Iran is likely anytime soon to be honest.”
Not likely? It isn’t physically possible.
The most they could do is surgical strikes. Their intelligence is limited, so they would be dicey strikes and simply not worth the risk.
The reaction in Europe and China to such strikes would be so adverse as to rule them out completely.
What sort of retaliation could Iran offer the US if it did strike? An invasion of Iraq. Iraq gets much worse and the domestic fall-out would kill the Republicans electorally.
A nuclear strike is simply out of the question. It would represent such an overwhelming upping of the ante that ever country in the world would review it’s diplomatic relationship with the US. And yes, even Howard would be leery of overt-support for such a strike. Last election Bennelong went to preferences and he only held it by 4%. He is in real danger of losing his seat, and he *has* to keep an eye on this at the next election. I don’t think he could stand the humiliation of being voted out of office that way.
I don’t anticipate an attack by the U.S. on Iran, either, let alone nuclear. It seems far more likely the U.S. will attempt to orchestrate a UN-brokered ceasefire and peacekeeping troops, although the timing on that, assuming it can be done, seems longer-term than short, since Russia and China seem altogether too happy to watch America stew in the Middle East pot it turned the heat up on when it went into Iraq. For them, this is an opportunity to reduce America’s status as sole-superpower. Anyway, going into Iran would be a terrible plan, since they could very easily start throwing martyrs at Iraq and make more immediate trouble for the U.S. than would be managable.
The mid-term elections don’t present any rationale for such actions either, since the American people themselves, I believe, would be appalled at the use of nukes, and have already lost considerable faith in Bush’s Iraq adventure.
Of course, if we’re going to speculate, then how about Bush suspends the Constitution, cancels the elections, imposes a draft, and then throws the military at Iran?
There’s a strong case to arraign Olmert on crimes against humanity charges.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200607/s1692020.htm
“There are hundreds and hundreds now either dead or wounded and a frightening statistic is that one-third nearly of those dead or wounded are children,” he said.
Liam re:
Protect Israel, stay in power (Congressional elections), hubris, control ME oil and generally follow through on stated policy to be the strongest militarily so that nobody can challenge their ‘Empire’. Screwing up China and Russia a bonus in the oil stakes.
Granted not infinite, but are you saying these were not the people who engineered the Iraqi fiasco?
State Department gets trumped by the Pentagon almost every time, eg look what happened to Powell and his plans for post conflict Iraq, so Condi is pushing the proverbial uphill with a lot less cred than Powell had. CIA?It’s a joke, it’s been gutted of its primary task, become in essence a political football and the Pentagon/Cheney cabal again holds the reins, and filters out unpalatable stuff the administration doesn’t want to hear as we saw with Cheney’s stovepiping of raw intelligence to the Office of Special Plans and telling officers who saw it differently (and correctly as it turned out) to shut the f*** up.
You’re half right with the military, the Air Force believes it alone can take out Iranian sites but the Army is saying BS, and trying to tell Bushco it’s BS, but as with General Shineski, contradicting Rumsfeld and the cabal has a remarkable tendency which leads to involuntary retirement.
Call me paranoid if you must, but then ex-CIA McGovern and a lot of others must be “paranoid” as well. For myself, Bush and the neocons have form, and the signs to me are very ominous that they’re going to make the last mistake.
Peter, I’m not going to enter into the debate on the likely geopolitical implications of the current situation, except to say that your analysis seems highly overwrought.
I do wonder about your reverence for Fisk, especially when it comes to military analysis. Did you see Fisk’s most recent performance on Lateline? He was positively watering at the mouth for the damage Hezbullah was seeking to inflict on Israel, and said that the huge number of sophisticated Iranian-supplied missiles would change the balance of power in the region.
You might want to check out one of his earlier cheerleading efforts, as a likely guide to his military acumen.
“…confirms my view that the USA will nuke Iran before the mid-term elections, or at the very least use tactical nuclear weapons in response to Iranian counter-attacks (into Iraq) resulting from a conventional bombing attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure.”
Debbie: Oh Peter, your discursive analysis of the neocon/Isreali lobby axis of evil is so groovy, I think I’m in love. Would you like to share my bomb shelter?
Tim: Um, Debbie…
Debbie: Quiet, Tim.
“There’s a strong case to arraign Olmert on crimes against humanity charges.”
And Human Rights Watch mounts a case against Hezbollah for the similar things:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/044f6fad4eb8d668795b43c35c5f48e0.htm
Yeah, fine, arraign them both. But Israel mustn’t be let off the hook. These are indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets, and are clearly within the category of crimes against humanity. Hezbollah’s responses are frightening, and to be condemned, but hardlty of the same order a state armed to the teeth bombing civilian areas. Check the relative death toll – there’s a stark reality of disequivalence that renders the “them too” arguments a wee bit facile.
Id rather be in Northern Israel than Southern Lebanon; put it that way.
Weasel words, Lefty E. Responses? What about initiatives and provocations?
Bismarck re:
So, you reject his opinion on Syrian motives, and discount his welcoming the end of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon?
Fisk is interesting precisely because he lives there. He also takes a moral position on things he reports, I agree with his moral position most of the time. The fact that he so obviously empathises with all the people he lives with is to his credit. I wonder if you had seen the carnage of Lebanon that Fisk has seen in some thirty years, how much you would have retained of whatever degree of pro-Israel pro American ME foreign policy you now hold.
Your imputation that I approve of everything he says is incorrect BTW.
Can anyone imagine a monolingual Murdoch Fox News flunky like Bill O’Reilly doing what Fisk has done, surviving for more than 10 minutes– “Hey ‘raghead’, bring me a rum and coke–no speaka English you dumb f***”?
Call it what you like Bismarck, Im easy. But explain to me what sort of provocations might justify 300 unrelated, innocent civilian deaths.
Welcoming the end of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon does not exactly put me in a small and exclusive club, Peter. My comment was directed at his military ‘acumen’, which he tends to inject into a lot of his reports.
I don’t quite get your point about O’Reilly. Fisk is a Levantophile and has demonstrated his preference by his choice of residence. Why should a non-Levantophile feel challenged by that?
I can’t believe someone here actually said “weasel words”…
What next? Can I be a “ciabatta-muncher”! Or how about “terrorist lover”! That’ll get those darned lefties, and really raise the tone…
I’m not justifying any civilian deaths, LE.
Peter, what the fuck are you doing on a mainstream leftist blog?
Your harebrained evil empire type rants sound very Socialist Alliance to me. Wouldn’t you be much happier with the comrades over here- http://www.greenleft.org.au/
The funny thing about Extreme Left nuts like you is that you dudes almost always have a mid-life crisis then swing over to the Neocon side you purportedly despise and take out a subscription to Quadrant.
But anyway, if you are serious and sane (please provide medical certificate) I’m willing to bet you $100 at 10 to 1 odds that George W Bush doesn’t nuke Iran during the course of his presidency. Are we on, champ?
I’d like some of that action too, Steve. I’m offering 20s.
I just googled ‘Levantophile’ from one of my earlier comments out of curiosity. No matches on the entire internet. So, Christo, can I redeem my cliche with a neologism?
Peter, I think you’re way off the mark here re: nuking Iran and airstrikes. Hersh’s latest article suggests that the opposition to the nuclear option comes not just from the State Department but the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff themselves.
Pretty simply, they don’t have the intelligence to successfully destroy Iran’s nuclear program, even if they did there is every chance the Iranians will simply rebuild and hence any strikes they do launch will have little effect; short of pissing off the Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians, the Europeans and the Islamic world (to name a few), starting a Shia insurrection in Iraq and possibly even Pakistan and in the process spark a massive spike in oil prices, if not a catastrophic tanker war in the Gulf of Hormuz.
There ain’t no votes in that.
Barring a fundamentally stupid miscalculation by Olmert or Nasrallah, I don’t see this conflict extending beyond tit-for-tat bombing and missle strikes and more overland raids. Neither Israel or Syria has shown any willingness to attack or provoke the other – Assad doesn’t want his armed forces humiliated (again) and his country’s economy crippled, and the Israelis don’t want to get bogged down on another front.
What I suspect’ll happen is: the US will let Israel pound Hezbollah/Lebanon for a few more days to a week, then there’ll be a cease fire, hostage exchange and a brokered accord that will satisfy no one and which none of the parties will abide by and so the low-level conflict will rumble on while both sides complain about the other’s bad faith and in a few month’s time there’ll be another ‘incident’ and we can go back to this merry dance.
Steve M, you are coming much too close to personal invective. Cool it or you are out of here.
I didn’t mean to imply that Hizbollah’s actions excuse Israel’s over-reaction. I’m just adding reports that seem relevant to the discussion.
d
In my academic discipline are people who I call “missile counters”, who add up all the missiles and planes across the Taiwan Straits and pronounce on the likelihood of war, and what “the Chinese” or “the Americans” – these “actors” – are going to do. It’s so embedded with unreflective epistemological assumptions about power and our moral response to it, with a trainspotting kind of detail that people mistake for depth, and all fueled by an almost embarrassing Boy’s-Own machismo. It’s almost as if these analysts want war. Fortunately, these overheated predictions are invariably completely wrong.
I feel the same way about this post.
Quite so, Daryl – Hezbollah’s actions and atrocities are highly relevant. I wouldnt give ya tuppence for those whackjobs. But I would wager they are a tiny proportion of the 300 deaths. Same logic employed by the TNI – wiping out a Timorese vilage after a Falintil raid – cant find them, so kill anyone from the area. What the fuck, they’re probably against us too, and all look the same.
Pure indiscriminate murder. Should be held to account in the Hague, along with Milosevic, and Suharto.
And you could add Condi to that list.
I’m with Liam on this one.
Leinad rte:
It’s far more probable that any initial attack will be conventional. Perhaps I should have been more specific on that. However, the greater danger is in a counter-attack by Iran which clearly US forces in Iraq would be extremely hard pressed to contain. I think it’s fair to say that the “blue suiters” have tickets on themselves that they can do it initially 100% with nuke bunker busters, falsely claiming that the accuracy and effect, with minimal fallout affecting civilians, will complete the job. Second option I assume they have pressed is they can also do it with conventional weapons-more sorties and heavier payloads.
Now, we have seen that Bushco has a prediliction of selectively choosing the advice that fits in with the policy, and sacking those who dissent. It’s possible therefore that Bushco can tell the Joint Chiefs they’re going to do it with nuke bunker busters anyway. Hersh said in that article that some of the military have really gone out on a limb to oppose the nuke option, using political arguments, but this is no guarantee, and I have seen no hard evidence that Bushco has ruled out the option. They may have done so under Joint Chiefs advice, but history will tell whether the intrepid flyer’s “can do” has lingered on. Busco has a record of ignoring political realities of military action.
With the Iranian counter-attack into Iraq, the temptation to use tactical nukes will become overwhelming without an adult in the White House. You may recall that Kennedy (as McGovern states) put Llewellyn (Tommy) Thompson into all confabs that Curtis Le May had with the Joint Chiefs over the Cuban crisis, and convinced Kennedy that Le May must take all the nukes out of his aircraft because they were going the diplomatic route. McGovern’s point being there is no Tommy Thompson in the Bush administration. The USAF still has the Le May disease, the questions are, to what extent have the Joint Chiefs in the current context over-ruled the USAF in the minds of Bushco, and what happens when the USAF says “we need your permission Mr President to use tac nukes to stop the Iranians in Iraq.”
Either by nuke bunker busters/conventional in the initial phase, but with tactical nukes used for containment, I forsee a grave danger with the political reality of Republicans losing the November elections, and as McGovern says, using a new war to prevent that. I must stress, I hope I’m totally wrong, but I fear and believe on the balance of probabilities that I am right. The behaviour of Bushco in the past reinforces my position.
Lebanon is the supreme trigger because they have a much stronger factual case with Iranian involvement in Lebanon than they ever had with WMD in Iraq.
As I said, two assumptions are necessary, and I hope I’m wrong.
Kemp, you are acting like you have some great sage-like insight into the Middle East, US foreign policy and the Bush Administration yet in reality your paranoid eyeballs are spinning around in tight circles and your mind is trippin’.
I think it is far more likely that George W Bush wishes he had never heard of Iraq let alone sent his army there. He has enough crap on his plate already without making your neo-Marxist Rapture Ready fantasy a reality.
Get a grip on yourself man.
Making Steve’s point in a more temperate manner:
Peter, the ‘blue suiters’ don’t feel confident of hitting and destroying Iran’s nuke facilities, full stop. They don’t want to be the first people in sixty years to get the nuclear Genie out of its bottle if they can’t be sure they’ve even got the right targets.
‘Bushco’ cannot sack the JCS without shooting themselves in the foot – can you imagine how bad it would look and how much nasty shit the Pentagon would leak to get revenge? There’s a delicate balance between civillians and military in the Pentagon, and fucking over the JCS like that would be smashing it with a jackhammer and pouring gasoline over the remains.
Sacking your highest military authorities before a war because they won’t go ahead with your crazy plans = not a good look, especially if (per your scenario) you’re trying to win an election.
As for your Tac Nuke scenario, Iran can’t invade Iraq via conventional means, even with an insurgency going on (which would slacken once all the Sunni takfiri realise that they’re now caught between the Great Satan and the vengeful partisans of Ali) US forces and airpower would still devastate them. Luckily, they don’t have to as, should they be bombed, millions of Shia loyalists would be happy to do it for them. In a city based mass insurrection of that kind, nuclear weapons are worse than useless.
other factual errors: the Joint Chiefs contain Airforce representatives, who per Hersh’s article are the ones causing a massive stink over the bombing plans right know because they know its a turkey.
At the current time Lebanon is not a ‘trigger’ for war with Iran – everyone knows, and has known for years that Iran has been selling missiles to Hezbollah, and frankly, no one cares enough to start the kind of war you’re talking about. The American public are sick of war, and want solutions to the conflicts they’re in before jumping off to an even more deadly and uncertain conflict over three Israeli soldiers. Starting a war at this point is no guarantee of renewed popularity for Bush.
“I didn’t mean to imply that Hizbollah’s actions excuse Israel’s over-reaction. I’m just adding reports that seem relevant to the discussion.”
Indeed. As the au courant terminolgy has it, Israel’s response has been “disproportionate.” No-one has yet revealed what a “proportionate” response would be in the circumstances, but, presumably, it would be Israel specific and would involve the entire population of northern Israel sitting passively in bomb shelters as Hizbollah blasts their above-ground infrastructure to smithereens while the UN engages in protracted negotiations for a ceasefire.
I can see why they’re not buying it. Jews have a centuries old bad rep as passive cowards who shrink from confrontation and rely on cunning manipulation of “honest men” to achieve their dastardly aims. I think we forget the arrival platforms at Auschwitz and the subsequent “selections,” not to mention the serried ranks of silent victims at Babi Yar. But Israel was founded on that memory and it’s burned deep into the national psyche.
And to add to what Leinad says, a nuclear conflict in the Middle East would send the price of oil up ten fold, if not one hundred fold. This would be enough to push the global economy into a spin not seen since the Great Depression. As a result the Neocons would be reviled throughout the world, including at home, and the Republican Party would be as unelectable for a century.
I think Kempie should purge himself of doomsday fantasies via a marathon session of “Zombie Combat” or “Jihadi Warriors” on his Play Station.
Geoff: a proportional response would acknowledge that Hezbollah was responsible for kidnapping the two soldiers, and hence target Hezbollah exclusively. Instead, Israel’s first response was to attack Beirut airport and numerous main highways all around Lebanon. The logic (if you can call it that) behind such attacks was that it would stop Hezb. spiriting the two soldiers out of the country. Utter bollocks. Hezb can smuggle them out if they so choose any number of ways, airport and highways nonwithstanding.
Those attacks on Lebanese infrastructure have singlehandedly undone a over a decade of hard work rebuilding a shattered, war-ravaged economy.
Israel has since bombed non-Hezbollah targets from Central Beirut to generally pro-Israel Maronite cities like Jounieh, and as far north as Tripoli, as well as large jet fuel dumps at Beirut airport (for no reason other than spite as far as I can see). Making a mockery of their claims to be in favour of Lebanese army intervention they’ve now started bombing Lebanese army barracks, killing officers and soldiers.
Contrary to their claims of targeting specific installations and minimising harm, the manner in which Olmert has attacked Lebanon is explicitly indiscriminate, as it is designed to coerce an entire nation into starting a new civil war on Israel’s behalf.
As one (by no means anti-war and definately pro-Israel) blogger puts it:
This is worse than a crime. It’s a blunder.
Leinad, re:
Correct, but some advanced the idea that the USAF could do it alone before the question of intelligence on sites arose. Correct me on that if I’m wrong on that. If I am wrong there, it seems from Hersh’s article that the civilians tricked the brass in having the option put in. Despite all this incredibly valid opposition, over-riding the military cannot be ruled out, although from Hersh it seems the option has been canned for the time being.
I’m not saying they will, I’m saying the military have great difficulty in advancing dissent as it’s career threatening.
Military trucks heading en masse for the Iraqi border to reinforce infiltrated Iranians causing mayhem– tactical nukes in artillery shells can’t be used? I don’t think you can blanket rule out possible scenarios of US forces in dire straits and use of tactical nukes. If not practical for use on truck convoys (because that can be done relatively easily with conventional weapons), how about mountain roads/border infrastructure, assembly points, tank formations in Iran? What if there were not enough conventional assets to go around due to cutting off US supplies from Basra/USAF busy elsewhere, and tac nukes were the only asset available to solve a pressing problem?
It’s an opinion and conjecture, but I’ve laid out some circumstances and underlying assumptions. I can’t prove they will do it, but conversely you can’t prove they won’t.
(I agree that it won’t necessarily give Bush renewed popularity, but he might gamble that it will. God speaks to him, so he alleges.)
Peter:Military trucks meet A-10s. Bye-bye trucks! No need for tactical freakin’ weapons, dude. Besides, the Yanks got rid of all their nuclear artillery in 1991. The Iranians don’t have to launch a mass-invasion to screw the Pommies and Seppos in Basra, and it’s better for them if they don’t.
Oh, and one more for the ‘disproportionate response’ file: Israel remains vigilant over the ever-present threat of Islamofascist Full Cream Milk.
Right to defend itself in-fucking-deed…
Agree wholeheartedly with your 9.42 comment Leinad. They are talking two weeks of the same. A crime and a blunder and obscene. Seems like they want all Lebanese back to the stone age.
On the other hand… not a whole lot of rockets get launched at you from a stone-age civilization.
I have no idea whether the US or Israel will be drawn into a misadventure against Iran and I’m not a betting man. Leinad argues impressively and rationally, but these things are not always decided on the basis of reason. Unfortunately Cheney, Rummy and Bush are all sufficiently out of touch and prone to hubris to attempt something so insane.
It seems to me that one miscalculation is building on another. We know that Hezbollah espouses the aim of eliminating Zionist Israel, but it’s doubtful whether they regard such an objective as at all achievable. The most common view from comment I’m hearing on Radio National and Newsradio (and through it the BBC, NPR in the US, Radio Netherlands and Deutsche Welle) is that Hezbollah had a fairly limited objective of extracting an exchange of prisoners. Possibly they sought to do it while the Israelis were distracted in Gaza and hence their response would be limited.
If so how wrong they were.
The Israelis apparently have been worried for ages about the arms build up of Hezbollah, knew perfectly well that they had missiles that could reach Haifa and had long-standing contingency plans to clean Hezbollah out. So the Hezbollah attack and capture of a couple of Israeli soldiers provided the trigger they needed.
The Israeli line is that they are only interested in annihilating Hezbollah and that they have no issues with the Lebanese people. In fact they want to weaken Hezbollah so that the Lebanese state may be strengthened and able to control Hezbollah once they have weakened it.
What they are achieving is the reverse of their stated aims.
Crippling Lebanon’s infrastructure and the bombing generally was always going to cripple Lebanon’s tourist industry which, I understand, was 15% of GDP. At first I thought that bombing milk factories and such was simply the action of a few crazies within the Israeli military, but the Lebanon Daily Star article Leinad linked to seems to indicate a full-on attack on Lebanon’s economic infrastructure.
There is no sense in this at all.
The word I’m getting is that although Hezbollah gets material support and training from Iran, Hezbollah itself is autonomous in what it does. There seems little doubt, however, that Iran will take encouragement and some kudos from the ability of Hezbollah to threaten Israel.
Israel needs to recognise that even if they completely pulverise Hezbollah (unlikely in the time available before the US calls off the dogs) Hezbollah will simply grow up behind them. In five years time they are likely to have even longer-range rockets at their disposal. Sooner or later the Israelis are going to have to talk rather than use violence and act unilaterally. At present they are diminishing the legitimacy of their state in the eyes of the region.
The same dysfunction plagues the US approach to Iran. The US will simply not talk. The logic of this is that it will either end in violence or regime-change. But the timetable of Iran’s progress to nuclear capability, which the US can’t tolerate, precludes organic regime-change at the Iranian end. At the American end the Bushites may just feel that it is their mission to solve the matter pre-emptively and ignore the domestic implications because they are on the way out anyway. But they have until 2008 and may not see the mid-term congressional election as cause enough for such drastic action.
We live in interesting times.
Yeah, agree with Leniad. From what I can see Israel’s plan, such as it is, seems to be to move Hezbo out of range of the northern border. Any talk of “destroying” them is purely for show. Won’t happen.
And I must say Peter I think you’ve really gone out on a limb with your post. For the various reasons cited above it’s fundamentally wrong and, to me at any rate, is smacking a bit of warporn.
I don’t think so, Brian – I think Condi will talk some sense into Bush. She’s pretty close to him and in a more powerful spot than in the first administration. And let’s not forget the GOP is also the party of big business and no one concerned about the economy is going to want an escalation to Iran.
Peter, I’m sorry, but I have to agree with Christine, though not about the warporn bit.
For those Lefties naive or dumb enough to think that Hamas can be reasoned with, here is an excerpt from their constitution:
“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it.
Peaceful Solutions, Initiatives and International Conferences initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. ” see http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html
That’s right- it is a battle to the death for the glory of Greater Palestine. The war must continue until the Palestinians have their lebensraum and the Jew is driven out.
Hamas is clearly a fascist organisation and Israel has every right to hunt them down like the feral vermin they are.
Hezbollah has the same philosophy and must likewise be eradicated by whatever pest control measure works best.
You cannot make peace with fascists. As George Orwell rightly noted in respect of the insidious cult of pacifism and appeasement that infected much of the Left during WWII:
“Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one.” see http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/pacifism/english/e_patw
As to the squawks about civilian casualities, 24,000 French civilians were killed by the allies during the liberation of Paris. Did that somehow make the liberation of Paris immoral and unethical?
Talk about warporn. Take a chill pill, steve. Your lack of regard for the destruction of innocent lives (many of them children) is repugnant.
And why is the only alternative “pacificism”? It’s not. Read what Leinad wrote. Israel don’t have to destroy economic infrastructure, bomb Lebanese army units, kill kids etc.
The sensible thing to do would have been to hit the rocket installations near the border. And to strengthen the Lebanese state so it could take on Hizbollah in the cities.
Instead they’re destroying the whole country.
One eighth of the population has been displaced. That’s half a million people.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/misery-rules-in-tomb-of-living-dead/2006/07/20/1153166518286.html
That’s a great term.
It is possible to condemn both the aims of Hezbollah and Hamas and also Israel’s killing of innocent civilians. Instrumentally, one also wonders if Israel’s aerial bombardment will achieve anything and whether they should be sending in ground troops to engage Hezbollah directly.
There’s no doubt whatsoever that one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.
From the London Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-2277717,00.html
It gets worse, same link:
A phone call BTW the Brits say they didn’t get.
“Israel don’t have to destroy economic infrastructure, bomb Lebanese army units, kill kids etc.”
Israel seems stupid to do this since in the medium run this will likely strengthen Hizbollah’s popular support. Hizbollah’s origins are in providing services – schools, food, medical, shelter – that the government was unable to provide. By crippling the Lebanese government’s ability to respond, Israel’s provided Hizbollah with renewed relevance. Which is probably what Hz was after when it started this miserable crisis last week.
Yes, good points Leinad. As well as being brutal and grossly disproportionate, the Israeli response is gobsmackingly stupid in strategic terms.
Mow down another bunch of pontential moderate allies in the Arab world. Israel does this habitually, as well as deliberately weakening Arab states (then blaming them for not addressing terrorism) The whole thing is a sham, and a transparent exercise in facilaiting furhter expansion into the occupied terrotiries. I believe Israel has a de facto policy of encouraging Arab extremisim, to faciltiate international acquiescencee in its expansionist policies, and marginalise moderate Arab voices that might attract more global support.
Frankly, Id accept the “Israel has a right to defend itself” line if it were a bona fide state protecting its borders. But it isnt – its an expansionist, agressor state seeking by stealth and force to further dispossess Palestinians beyond its legal, recognised 1967 border. All must ultimately be seen in this context.
The fact is, withdraw to the 1967 border, create a Palestinian state, and in 10 years time, Arab moderate governments will be chasing down and jailing the last remianing “real IRA” style lunatic fringe rump themselves. But Israel has no genuine interetss in this outcome.
Kim, I bow to your superior knowledge about the possible effectiveness of Condy. Most recently I heard Phillip Adams talking to Bruce Schapiro about Condy, Bush, Blair et al in the light of the G8. They suggested that Blair came across as even more of a poodle than one could have imagined, a poodle that struggled to get his master’s attention at any level, except perhaps (they said this) at the level Monica stooped to in order to gain Bill’s attention.
As to the the master, Bruce was appalled. If it acts like a klutz and talks like a klutz then…
Condy they saw has having great access to Bush (and the others) because he likes her, but she gets on so well in part by suppressing her own views.
Steve, one of the more sensible things Ivan Illich said all those decades ago was that as an organistion you should never adopt or aspire to goals that are unachievable. This leads to distortion, destructive spin and proaganda and often self-delusion. It also often leads to action which undermines the attainment of your espoused objectives.
All parties in the Middle East imbroglio, from the immediate actors to their distal backers such as the US and Iran, display this dysfunctional trait.
The Israelis and people like Bush and Cheney often say, “You don’t talk to Evil, you destroy it!”
Except they can’t and sooner or later a way to dialogue must be found. Menwhile they take actions that drastically reduce the prospect of dialogue. (I’m not ruling out some limited police action here, only the mad and seeming indiscriminate lashing out which seems to contain a large element of revenge.)
Meanwhile we have Hezbollah and Hamas directly infringeing the Geneva convention by lobbing bombs into civilian areas. We have ‘targetted killings’ on the part of Israel where it is deemed acceptable to assassinated an elected official by blowing up his home and killing his wife and 7 kids in the process. And worse.
At least Iran is still talking about nukes. The US is too. But this administration has the habit of specifying unacceptable preconditions to their appearance at the table and on their side are unwilling to take any option, including the nuclear one, out of play.
If you can rest easily in your bed with such people making our future, well then good luck to you.
LE it seems to me you’ve provided the only rationale I’ve seen yet that adequately explains Israel’s behaviour.
Must go now.
This post is on about the same level of cynicism and paranoia as Dr. Helen Caldicott in 1984. She famously warned that, if Ronald Reagan were re-elected, nuclear war became “a mathematical certainty.”
The jihadis will kill you as quickly as they will anyone else. Just because you hate the leaders of the West as much as they do doesn’t make you their buddies.
Caldicott’s maths weren’t as bad as you think…
Good point on Condi Kim, but I suggest that in a contest with Cheney and Rummy, it’s by no means assured that Condi will win. I again disagree with those who think the US will never nuke Iran, with Cheney as the centrepiece of my argument at this point.
http://www.justinlogan.com/justinlogancom/2005/07/what_is_the_pla.html
Now while the same military brass probably oppose this, as per the Hersh article, and as I have seen no evidence that this plan has been buried, it raises the question that if this plan is current for something that Iran doesn’t instigate (attack in the USA), it immediately raises the question why would the Cheney cabal hold back on resurrecting a nuclear option for what they clearly state Iran did do, namely (added to all other actual or perceived “crimes”) instigate the Hezbollah attack on Israel. Whichever way one turns, it is a fact that some if not many in the administration are itching for an excuse, any “plausible” excuse to nuke Iran, chief among them Dick Cheney. His record of belligerence towards Iran cannot be denied and I see no evidence he has been cut out of the loop at this stage. Cheney remains the most powerful VP ever.
In an earlier Hersh article:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact
Cheney and the “messiah” remains IMHO the most dangerous combination on the planet. And the Joint Chiefs resigning an masse, (which I doubt would happen) in opposition to an executive nuke order will not necessarily deter Cheney or Bush.
(If Bush does falter, Cheney need only give him a pretzel)
In war you target your enemy’s economic ability to prosper and fight. Hezbollah in Lebanon garner much support among poor Shiites from their economic capacity to deliver health, ‘education’, social welfare and the like. You can bet your boots the dairy factory wasn’t a Lebanese Christian one and Mossad would have known it. Israel will not allow Hezbollah to avoid the guns and butter economic tradeoffs of war in Southern Lebanon here.
As for Iran’s view of the conflict, from The Advertiser, Adelaide p4 Wed July 4-
‘ War against Israel had only just begun and there was nowhere in Israel safe from Hezbollah attacks, Iranian parliamentary Speaker Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel said yesterday.
“The day has come when everybody returns home, the day when Palestinians return home, return to the land of their origins and it is also the day when the Israelis have to return to the countries where they originally came from,” the Speaker told an anti-Israel gathering in the Palestine Square in Tehran.
Thousands of Iranians attended the state-organised gathering and declared their readiness to fight against Israel.
“We call on the US and the West to cut their support for the Zionist regime, otherwise there would never be peace and reconciliation with over 1.5 billion Muslims world-wide,” the Iranian Speaker said.’
Now do you understand where Israel is coming from with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Are you prepared to sacrifice Israel to placate the hungry crocodile of Islam? Me, I prefer crocodile skin belts to handbags. Islam can go screw itself, but if it wants the final Crusade, it will get my undivided attention and total economic dedication to the task and no holds barred.
Sorry, Wed July 19 Advertiser
Better hand up your boots Obby
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5191396.stm
By that logic, Hezbollah is entitled to attack American civilians in the USA for the US’s $108 billion in aid to Israel?
I change my boots then Peter, albeit Hezbollah have already hit Americans. I still think the coming Clash of Civilisations will make the odd destruction of a dairy factory in Lebanon, somewhat humdrum. Slowly but surely we are going to war with Islam.
More warporn.
Observa, you’re weird, dude.
You can forget the “we”, but seeing as you are so keen Obby, why don’t you volunteer for duty? Put on your holy crusader gear, pick up that righteous sword Excalibur hanging on the smoko room wall, and head for the holy lands to eliminate the “infidel”?
Katyusha rocket is not fired from an “installation”, it is fired from a mobile launcher. So the “sensible thing” isn’t so easy as you tell yourself.
As far as the U.S. striking Iran, possible, but I doubt it. Peter, what in the hell makes you think that the U.S. would have to resort to nukes if Iran were to attack Iraq?
I guess they could be used, but 1) I seriously doubt we have any in theater, unless there are any in hold of a carrier or supply ship and 2) your scenario is laughable:
Uh, you just have no idea about U.S. conventional capabilities, do you? Nuke a column of trucks? Hell send half dozen A-10s or simply have an F-15 deliver a sensor fused weapon and may follow up with a couple of cluster munitions, g’bye enmasse trucks.
Massed forces are the last thing the U.S. needs nukes to deal with.
Well, bomb the mobile launchers then. I’m sure they’re not hidden in supermarkets in Beirut.
SAINTLY INNOCENT CIVILIAN: “I have nothing to do with Hizb’allah except supporting it in every way I can think of in it’s untiring efforts to finish what Hitler started even though he didn’t do anything!â€?
MAILED FIST OF ISRAEL: “POW! Uppercut!â€?
SLC: “AAAh, help me Allah, they are defending themselves somehow! Absolutely none of this is our fault and yet our airport is exploding.â€?
KOFI ANNAN: “Cease your brutish beating of that callow youth! It’s not his fault he hates Jews and supports an organization that has absolutely nothing to do with him that kills Jews! People have been killing Jews for thousands of years, you never complained before!�
MAILED FIST OF ISRAEL: -BEEP! Thank you for calling the Mailed Fist of Israel, currently raining blows apon the bloody, pulverized face of some worthless Hizb’allah jackass. If you would like to be the next to receive some of our patented ‘missile therapy’, dial 1, if you wish to register a strong condemnation of whatever I happen to be doing at this very instant, dial 2, if you’re Kofi Anan or Jimmy Carter, dial 1-800go-fuck-yourself. Thank you! BEEP!
KOFI ANNAN: “This is an outrage! I ordered the Fillet Mignon and I got the Boeuf a la mode!
SLC: “Focus, Kofi!�
KOFI ANNAN: “Oh right, yeah, the Americans-“
SLC: “Jews-“
KOFI ANNAN: “Jews, are bombing the Iraqis-“
SLC: “Lebanese-“
KOFI ANNAN: “Leb.. seriously, I’m going to have to send this back.�
SLC: “Will no one save us from this GENOCIDE!!? God, I seriously empathize with what Hitler felt even though he didn’t do anything, I bet the Jews bombed him too. Now I must download mpgs of decapitated American Servicemen for an Islamist website to put on the screen of my mobile phone so I can show some asshole Guardian correspondent how radicalized I’ve been by Israel’s illegal war of aggression!�
IRON-SHOD JACKBOOT OF AMERICA: “Hey, can anyone join this party? POW!!�
SYRIA: “Aaaah!�
As I said above John_R in the remainder of that paragraph you quoted:
I’ll give you another one. What if Sunburn missiles sank a carrier within the Straits of Hormuz, fired from practically invisible presumably well camoflaged rugged sites on the Iranian coast alongside the myriad boat ramps where suicide boats are launched from. Do you think that Rummy et al wouldn’t spit the tactical nuke dummy at that?
Militarily you are correct that use of tac nukes is unnecessary in almost all of these circumstances, and over-kill, but pressed to the wall, a disaster thrown in, Rummy’s micro-management, Cheney’s “extreme prejudice”: no political message of nuclear revenge, ever? That’s my point.
Look Kim, the point of mobile launchers is that they move around and therefore are not going to be where they are otherwise there’s no point in them being mobile in the first place. So if they’re not going to be in supermarkets that’s exactly where I’d be targetting.
I was kinda wondering what part of Islam don’t the lunar left get. I guess those that run about in ever diminishing circles looking for rooted causes with all their myriad conspiracy theories find it hard to take Muslims at their word. Seems to me Deconstructionism can all get a bit unhealthy and counterproductive if you let it. That’s the difference between us I guess. I trust these Muslims because they’ve never given me reason to doubt their word and I’ll go on trusting them for as long as their deeds backup their words. That probably makes me an honorary Israeli.
Shorter observa: It’s all Derrida’s fault.
“Rooted Cause”: I’m going to steal that line.
…
An honorary Israeli, observa? Do you mean like Sammy Davis Jr.?
As we have seen with asymmetric war and “victories” by the weaker parties, the prediliction of the stronger force to spit the dummy and indulge in massive disproportionate over-reaction, just like in Lebanon right now, is not action exclusive to the Israelis.
With the loss of a carrier for example, the political humiliation, let alone the military humiliation, would drive the US beserk, IMHO. We cannot eliminate the political dimensions of unintended consequences in its effect on military decision making. The whole question of asymmetric war is now a whole new ball game, as Hezbolla are demonstrating. Al Queda initiated this new paradigm with box cutters.
Hezbollah have been busy in Lebanon and Israel wants to remove as much of their handiwork as they can.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3278675,00.html#n
On Lateline or the 7:30 report a couple of nights ago an Israeli spokesperson said that the reason Israel is bombing Lebanese roads and the Beirut airport is to cut off Hezbollah’s supply routes. This is stock standard military strategy.
I acknowledge Brian’s points above about the pointlessness of having an objective that is unachievable. However I don’t see what alternative Israel has at the moment to its shock and awe strategy of retaliation. It has been practising restraint for years without getting anything in return. It is reasonable for Israel to think that if it makes life in the occupied territories an utter misery then eventually the Palestinians will be demoralised, turn away from Hamas and support a more moderate leadership that is prepared to return to the negotiating table.
With respect to Hezbollah, it may be necessary for Israel to establish a no man’s land in Southern Lebanon to a depth of 100km or so. The buffer could be further increased if Hezbollah acquires loner range missiles.
Hopefully the suffering in Lebanon will be enough to make the Druze, Sunni and Christians seek to eradicate Hezbollah and its support base.
What I suggest above doesn’t make me happy in the least. In fact it is all rather depressing. But the thing is Hamas and Hezbollah are fascist outfits every bit as wicked as the Nazis. They have made it perfectly clear that they will never negotiate or lay down their arms until Israel is destroyed and Greater Palestine established.
It is illustrative that no-one here has been able to suggest a realistic alternative path for Israel to follow.
Speaking of lost causes, remember this one http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19859305-1246,00.html?from=public_rss
Can you imagine what Hicks will be like when the he gets back?
Let me guess. A lot older?
A by-product of the current war is likely to be the death of the ‘two-state solution’ to the Israel-Palestine problem . With the experience of southern lebanon and Gaza behind them, it’s hard to see Israel pulling out of the West bank any time soon.
(It’s maybe worth pointing out to Liam that Israel did in fact unilaterally withdraw from Gaza without getting anything in return — unless you count 100’s of Qassam rockets — and was, at least until the current flare up, also committed to withdrawal from the West Bank. And that it offered almost total withdrawal to Arafat in 2000, only to be repaid with waves of suicide bombings.)
Steve, a better option might be to destroy the bulk of Hizbollah’s missile capability on the ground, and interdict the flow of replacements from Iran. That seems to be what the IDF are trying to do at the moment. An international force to police the border, in the absence of a viable Lebanese military presence, might become an acceptable option (Israel and the US reject it for now, but that may change).
There have been reports out of Israel over the past couple of days that the IDF is urging the population of south lebanon to flee north en masse. Whether that’s ahead of a ground invasion or simply to get them out of the way of air strikes is not clear.
Maybe it’s the best way of keeping the civilian death toll down, but a war objective that requires the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people makes me feel more than slightly queasy.
Rob, I think you mean Lefty E or one of the others. Apart from my first comment (which made no argument about border withdrawals) all of my contributions have been the usual banal sarcasm.
Steve: ahem.
Seems illustrative to me, that most commentators have been way too happy to swallow in total whatever party line suits their prejudices best. Liam’s citing of Orwell in the other thread has been quite astute.
In a conventional war, targeting an airport is stock standard.
This is not a conventional war.
Hezbollah is not a conventional army and does not need, or rely on massive air-freight to maintain its operations. It has access to extensive smuggling networks and can be supplied overland by Syria. Its missile stockpiles, of between 10,000 – 13,000 are likely to be enough to see out this crisis. The attack on Rafik Hariri (yeah, remember him?) International Airport did not damage its warmaking capacity in any significant manner.
What the attacks did (there were four of them, one on the runways, three on the airport’s reserves of Pro-Hezbollah avgas) was demonstrate right from the beginning that Israel’s retaliation is (among other things) aimed at destroying the country’s economy.
Collective punishment, is almost by definition unreasonable. How would you take it if you were punished, bombed, your relatives murdered in retaliation for the actions of your (heavily-armed) neighbours. Are you likely to negotiate with someone who is that callous with your life, liberty and property? Why make concessions to someone who has given you only misery? Why would you trust them?
Olmert’s claims of ‘minimizing civilian casualties’ are contradicted by the logic of collective punishment. If you are bombing a country as a method of coercion, you are by definition targeting everyone.
Israel has been pursuing these policies for nearly two decades, and all it has succeed in doing is undermining and alienating the moderates with which it has the best chance of negotiating.
Screw over Fatah and you get Hamas.
Screw over Siniora, and he’ll leave you with Nasrallah
Sorry, Liam, I meant Lefty E, who said:
“Frankly, Id accept the “Israel has a right to defend itselfâ€? line if it were a bona fide state protecting its borders. But it isnt – its an expansionist, agressor state seeking by stealth and force to further dispossess Palestinians beyond its legal, recognised 1967 border. All must ultimately be seen in this context.”
My apologies.
“also committed to withdrawal from the West Bank….”
Nonsense Rob. They committed to remove a few “outposts” and none of the major settlements. The offer was, and is, a joke. Barak’s offer in 2000 was slightly better, but still the same series of disconnected Bantustans. No Palestinian leader could possibly accept such a deal without starting a civil war, and the Israelis knew that.
I reproduce the whole content of Michael Scheuer’s latest article because it is so relevant. Scheuer is the author of “Imperial Hubris” and an ex-CIA agent whose last job was tracking down Bin Laden:
http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=9369
Doing bin Laden’s Work
for Him by Michael Scheuer
Lefty E, the whole basis of the formation of Kadima and the Sharon-Olmert strategy is, if negotiations fail, for Israel to unilaterally withdraw within defensible borders – the emphasis being on defensible: the IDF does not believe the Green Line is militarily defensible – and leave the Palestinians to stew in their own juice.
This, for the time being at least, is no longer an option. I doubt the Israelis will reoccupy Gaza, but they won’t pull out of the West Bank. From the easternmost point of the West Bank, it is nine miles to Tel Aviv. Israel will not allow a build up of rockets and missles so close to its largest city and technological and economic hub, and it must regard such an eventuality as inevitable, given Gaza and south Lebanon.
As for the 2000 offer, disconnected Batutans can still survive as a national entity. It’s quite possible for a nation to exist in separate entities. East Timor is an example. There is East Timor proper, and the Oecussi enclave in West Timor. Furthermore, Arafat is on record as saying he walked away from Camp David because he knew if he negotiated, he would be assassinated by the Islamists. Personal survival was always the top of his list of imperatives.
With respect, I think you’re missing the point Rob. Many countries have one enclave, but all require a national core terriority. The Palestinians have a right to self-determination, and Israel’s policy is deliberately undermining it, in an underhand, rather than transparent way. Are you aware that significant numbers of settlers are not ideological zionists, but some of the poorest Israelis there for the enormous state subsidies? Its a deliberate official policy of disposession, not a tolerated movement of a hardcore minority of Israeli citizens, as it is often portrayed. Take Hebron – this is some 200 hard core settlers on a fortified hill surrounded by 10,000 Palestinians. Its nothing short of ludicrous to put their rights ahead of the locals, and must be ended if there’s any chance of peace in the region. Time to stop apologising for Israel’s indefensible actions here.
If the Palestinians accepted the homeland offered them by Israel, the settlements would become non-viable over time. They would be the isolated Bantustans, encircled by enemies, and the settlers would eventually retreat to Israel proper. There is no doubt that the Begin-Shamir governments encouraged an indefensible policy by establishing and protecting the settlements. Every sensible Israeli knows their days are necessarily numbered. It is the only real offence, IMHO, that Israel has ever committed.
Thanks to the recent operations of Hamas and Hizbollah, and the effect they will have had on Israeli public opinion, the dismantlement of the settlements has probably been pushed a long way further into the future. I point out that even Begin forcibly destroyed settlements in the Sinai peninsula in return for a friable peace deal with Egypt (secured only by massive US aid), as did Sharon and Olmert in Gaza for absolutely nothing. Now the incentives to remove the settlements in the West Bank have dissipated.
Yet another example, if one was needed, of the Palestinians never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Steve, you mention a buffer zone of 100km in South Lebanon. According to my map that will take it to just south of Beirut. The whole damn country is not much longer than 200km.
The notion of a prisoner exchange, rather than the destruction of Israel, still appeals to me as a credible objective, in the case of both Gaza and Hezbollah. I’ve heard on the radio (from a non-Hezbollah supporting Lebanese) that Israel has illegally held Hezbollah prisoners for over 10 years. In the case of Gaza there are said to be 150 women in Israeli goals, some of whom have children who were born in goal. The notion was that Israel could execute a bit of pro forma violence to show that hostage taking is not penalty free. Then a cease-fire is declared and some time later a prisoner swap occurs.
Perhaps that is what Sharon might have done, because he didn’t have to prove his toughness.
But Sharon’s stategy of “arrogant unilateralism” was never going to work either, according to Immanuel Wallerstein. Wallerstein points out, Rob, that the Israelis also have never missed “an opportunity to miss an opportunity” in the last 50 years, that Sharon’s unilateralism would “speed up the delegitimization of Israel” and that finally “Peace is always a political, not a military, arrangement.”
I do agree, Rob, that the recent madness has set back the possibility of negotiations. Over the last couple of years the voices consistently calling for a negotiated two-state settlement have been Palestinian, albeit not Hamas. I suspect that in the long run Israel is going to have to live with a situation where their power is contestable in the region. The sooner they start to seek an accommodation the better chance they’ll have, because as Michael Scheuer so eloquently points out (thankyou Peter) the Israelis are presently doing bin Laden’s work for him.
Peter, Wallerstein also addressed the issue of attacking Iran. The fact that Hersh wrote about it, Wallerstein commented on it and all the evidence you have brought forward demonstrates, I think, that it is unfortunately not outside the realms of possibility.
BTW the Lebanese PM said that if Israel mounted a full-scale invasion of Lebanon the Lebanese army would stand shoulder to shoulder with Hezbollah to resist.
Thanks Brian, the Wallerstein link tends to confirm my approach, and I think the expression “speed up the delegitimisation of Israel” is apt.
If the Lebanese PM said that the Leb army would support the Hezbollah, then that means 2 things. He’s bluffing to try and deter the Israelis from launching a ground invasion or else he is admitting that the lebanese government have tacitly supported Hezbollah all along, and thus their initial claims that they had nothing to do with Hezbollah activities are a lie.
It is well known that terrorists will use the civilian population as a human shield so that mobile rocket launchers are stationed/hidden in civilian areas. Thus Israeli targetting of these areas which regrettably leads to civilian deaths. The Israelis at least tried to warn the population via the distribution of pamphlets. News reports stated that Hezbollah blocked road to stop its civilian population from escaping. Did Hezbollah ever distribute pamphlets amongst Israeli towns before launching it’s missiles or issue a warning whenever a suicide bomber infiltrated Israeli borders? It is well known that terrorists do not care about the cost of human lives, in fact if by their own actions, their own people are killed as a secondary consequence, and this can be blamed on another (ie Israel), then that just furthers their cause doesn’t it? The fact that people here fall for the “evil Israel killing our innocent children” line and condemn Israel makes you a sucker for their propaganda, doesn’t it?
Hezbollah are not some shadowy terrorist group who slip into that area against the wishes of the local population. They probably are the majority of that population. Do these people never think of cause and effect? Even other arab nations have come out and basically said “hezbollah, you’re on your own here”, ie acknowledging that Hezbollah’s actions have caused this.
I wonder at the anti-semitic thinking behind such statments as the “delegitimisation of Israel”. It’s the only strong stable democracy in the region surrounded by a bunch of countries, that, given their undemocratic natures, well, I doubt any of you would seriously want to go and live there. As a woman, I know I wouldn’t. Israel is always being criticsed for defending itself as if somehow it is on a higher moral standing than any other country. Where is the international criticism of Hezbollah, Hamas etc? Why the preference for those guys over Israel? What have they done for the world and humanity in general to deserve your support?
As for the link to the article of how we are doing “Osama’s work”. Taking that article at face value, I’m sure we are to a point… but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong – it’s only showing up more clearly what a fascist, aggressive, evil mindset some of those people/governments/organisations in those countries have. It is all very well to say we must be tolerant of others, but I see no redeeming virtue in being tolerant of the intolerant. So it seems we are being awoken to how nasty some of those countries can be. Well, they always were nasty, we just pretended not to notice before. Iran kicked out the Shah in the 70s – that’s 3 decades worth of nastiness there.
It would be wonderful to sit down and negotiate peaceful solutions with these people, but unfortunately many of them do not want that. How do you negotiate peace with people who do not want it? Or whose terms for peace are completely impossible to contemplate? It is well known that Hamas & Hezbollah want the destruction of Israel as a sovereign nation. How are you able to side with such people? It is such a revolting hateful mind set. Is that really how you think? I wish the Middle East was not always such a cesspit of violence and war, but it is. The only language hate filled fanatics seem to understand is war, unfortunately, and handwringing by appeasement types in the West will do zilch.
Perhaps one day, the general population in Lebanon will finally grow up, mature and grow tired of this attitude and support more moderate leaders who actually will negotiate. But for now they don’t, and thus Israel always has to watch its back. Maybe too, we can hope that one day in the future the arabs that belong to groups like Hezbollah and Hamas will have something more edifying to contribute to humanity than the suicide bomber.
Boedicca, a response point by point but not exhaustive:
There’s a third possibility you have overlooked. If your country is going to be destroyed anyway, despite the fact that the Lebanese government disagreed vehemently with Hezbollah actions initially, which is undeniable, the Israeli over-reaction justifies self-defence at this stage. It’s a matter of pride at the very least, when your country is being destroyed as a reprisal by an Israeli PM with an inferiority complex to past military PMs.
And then promptly bombed many fleeing as a result of those warnings.
It’s well known now from Israeli acts that the Israeli government doesn’t care much for innocent Lebanese lives either. Ask yourself why only the US and UK oppose a UNSC ceasefire now. Ask yourself what the rest of the world thinks, and how it is outraged at this carnage and how it universally agrees to morally equal value of all lives.
Makes us suckers for humanitarianism, that innocent civilians on both sides have rights to life and security. Hezbollah was wrong to attack. Israel is wrong in massive over-reaction.
The main reason is that they fear Shia and Iranian influence. They’re also corrupt despotic Sunni regimes petrified that their own people will recognise the Shia Hezbollah as the only ones standing up to Israel’s illegal acts and persecution/robbing Palestinians of their land. What started it all is a pointless argument. Blame the British if you must. I do. Lately I blame the US for giving Israel a UNSC blank cheque.
The usual slur tactic to denigrate those who call out the Israeli government on its policies. Doesn’t work anymore. You may like to contemplate the fact that being anti-Zionist is not necessarily anti-Semetic (which is in any case a misnomer of a word)
Particularly Israel when it comes to annexing bit by bit the West Bank, and calling Palestinians who react to Israeli violence as “terrorists”. Have a look at what Bibi said above on the bombing of the King David Hotel “celebration”
You have created a false dichotomy, but I’ll put it back to you in this way:
How could people have sided with Irgun and Menachem Begin?
As distinct from people who drop bombs on civilians with American taxpayer funded F16s.
Well said Peter, that about covers my response too.
Backing Boudicca’s point about Hizbollah’s use of human shields, Live from an Israeli Bunker reports:
Can you provide a link, please, Rob?
Here it is, Mark. Very good blog.
Thanks, Rob.
Going back to Boedicca’s borader discussion of the current war, the inestimable Norm Geras has a post up that makes quite clear what Hizbollah is fighting for.
And, of course, what Israel is fighting for.
Fewer and fewer people buy that pat line anymore Rob. Israel’s support in the West is haemorrhaging over these brutal, stupid and pointless assualts on civilians, and civilian infrastructure. Anyone who knows anything about Lebanon (and the Israelis know more than most)knows that support for Hezbollah among non-Shia Lebanese is negligible, if not non-existent. They arent fooling anyone. But lo! Olmert’s ratings are up domestically.
You can see it on this thread – its only the hardcore right that isnt disgusted by these indiscriminate attacks. And if ISrael is ‘fighting’ Hezbollah, why are so busy they recruiting for them? I maintain that Israel’s policy only makes sense if you see as a strategy to encourage Arab militancy, in order to marginalise moderates who might gain western support, to faciliate further disposession in the West bank.
Illegal, fucked, and racist. Every time an Israeli moderate is elected, someone right wing freak assassinates him. NOw they’re bombing the crap out of he moderate Lebanese government – after we were all just applauding their success in shoving Syria off their back. We are truly awful allies of Arab moderates, arent we?
Plenty of Israelis agree with what Im saying. This is a tragedy of mammoth proportions for a country barely recovering from civil war; and great setback for Arab and Israeili moderates, and a huge victory for the hawks – Hezbollah and the Israeli right. They might as well be in league with each other. Together, they may be considered the enemy.
Here’s a good idea – Why dont they meet in the Sinai, away from civilians, leave the IDF conscripts out of it too – and blow each other to hell. Good riddance to both.
Another report from the Hindustan Times (besides the one in the Asia Times) confirms that the two Israeli soldiers were captured on Lebanese terrotory. Just repeating what I said on another thread, this means that the two Israeli soldiers are POWs and not kidnapped, and that Israel started this war, not Hezbollah.
http://72.14.221.104/search?q=cache:Rbn7oBquCyIJ:www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1742306,00050004.htm
See also: http://english.bna.bh/?ID=47348
Even Kofi Annan has fallen into the trap of declaring that Hezbollah are responsible for starting the war.
Meanwhile, German and Russian intelligence services have proposed negotiating with Hezbollah for the return of the IDF soldiers.
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/07/21/intelligenceservices_.shtml
(Thanks to Addamo at Antony Loewenstein)
That’s quite some comment, LE. I’m not sure I understand it all.
I’m quite open to the argument that Israel’s response has been disproportionate, though not yet convinced — not least because I’m not sure what response would have been ‘proportionate’.
My main problem with what you say is that you seem to think that nothing has happened, or is happening, to Israel.
Hizbollah began this attack with a barrage of missile attacks on northern Israel. Under its cover, they infiltrated into israel through a tunnel they had bored under the border. They killed several soldiers and kidnapped two. The IDF predictably made an effort to retrieve their soldiers, losing several more and a tank in the process. It all took off from there.
Since then, about 1,300 missiles have been fired at Israel, causing dozens of fatalities, and hundreds of wounded. An Iranian-supplied C-802 missile (a cruise missile, I believe) was fired at an Israeli warship. Israel can hardly complain, since this is now a war, not a police or anti-terrorist action. But Hizbollah’s attacks have been truly indiscriminate, and the warheads of their missiles are packed with ball bearings and nails, the better to kill anyone within range of the detonation.
Israel’s task is extremely difficult. In the six years since they pulled out of Lebanon, Hizbollah has acquired an arsenal of around 13,000 missiles. It has also prepared a network of underground tunnels (including ones under the border with Israel) and bunkers which are largely impervious to air attack. The IDF will have to deploy ground forces to destroy them, ratcheting the war up another notch. Additionally, as indicated before, Hizbollah use the local villagers as human shields, locating the launch sites in private homes, and as evidenced by some of the posts above, force the villagers to remain to provide cover even if they are desperate to leave, as urged by the IDF.
I can’t see any realistic connection between this scenario and what you propose as Israel’s ‘real’ motivation:
“I maintain that Israel’s policy only makes sense if you see as a strategy to encourage Arab militancy, in order to marginalise moderates who might gain western support, to faciliate further disposession in the West bank.”
This has nothing to do with the West Bank — except that, into the near term, it will make Israel unwilling to withdraw behind the security wall as proposed by Sharon and Olmert. It can’t afford to allow Hizbollah or Hamas to hunker down behind a battery of C-802s just nine miles from Tel Aviv.
A more logical explanation, at least to me, is that Hizbollah has been planning this for some time. Its weapons sites and protective infrastructure were in place. It watched the attacks on Gaza — intended to recover captured soldiers — and recognised that the moment had come. It knew very well that Israel would respond as it has done (witness Gaza, once again), especially as the window that Olmert left open, in the case of Gaza, for diplomatic efforts to retrieve the IDF captive proved unavailing and probably counter-productive. (Apparently the IDF commanders were furious that Olmert and Peretz gave Hamas so much time to smuggle the soldier into hiding.) Olmert wasn’t going to do that again.
For Hizbollah, committed as it is to Israel’s destruction, it was a matter of carpe diem.
A long way up the thread, Observa posted this quote from the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament:
“War against Israel had only just begun and there was nowhere in Israel safe from Hezbollah attacks, Iranian parliamentary Speaker Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel said yesterday.
“The day has come when everybody returns home, the day when Palestinians return home, return to the land of their origins and it is also the day when the Israelis have to return to the countries where they originally came from,â€? the Speaker told an anti-Israel gathering in the Palestine Square in Tehran.”
That is the day that Hizbollah and its principal backer, funder and supplier — Iran — think they have seized.
July 18 US House of Representatives:
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=9380
It’s interesting to apply mutatis mutandis for a Palestinian/Hezbollah/Hamas/ME version, perhaps it would be something like this:
What’s good for the goose is also good for the gander, so it is said.
Israel’s use of human shields. From Johnathan Cooke at aljazeera and at jkcook.net:
Several residents pointed out that there are military installations near Nazareth that Hezbollah has been trying to target. Northern Israel is under martial law, which means that divulging details about the nature of the installations and their locations is forbidden.
Nonetheless, a 58-year-old man who wished to be identified only as Abu Firas said: “We are like human shields. They build these military sites close to Arab communities because they hope it will make Hezbollah more frightened to strike at them. Where are we in all this? Israel thinks we are Hezbollah, and Hezbollah thinks we are Israelis. No one cares about what happens to us.”
Nice try, Peter, but I don’t think you’ll make it as a comedian
silkworm, it seems (from the handful of articles I found from a google search) that Hizbollah put out some disinformation before the real story broke. If what you allege is the case, the media would have been all over it.
From jkonline.net and medialens.org:
Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the “World in brief” section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to “detain” two Palestinians Israel claims are members of Hamas.
And now we know who they were from the letter to the Independent via Loewenstein’s blog:
Sir: The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza – an incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press [and in the British press]. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner – and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis, of which there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.
Also the first reports of the kidnapping on the Lebanon border were reported in Haaretz and in the NYT on the 13th, as quoted on Wikipedia, which is a day after those reports, referred to in the bolgs above, that quote statements from Hizbollah. At the moment who started what is a matter of who stated what as no witnesses have spoken.
In any event, the question of who started what is only relevant from a propaganda point of view and that battle is determined by who can control the media. The war in effect began decades ago and still continues. Hence, the strategic question is why did Israel choose this moment to attack?
Rob, the logic of what Lefty E is saying isn’t hard to follow.
The Israeli government asserts that it is the responsibility of the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority to disarm terrorist groups.
Remember bombing Arafat’s compound? The economic and governmental infrastructure of the PA has been systematically destroyed over the last 6 years.
Now the economic and governmental infrastructure of Lebanon is being systematically destroyed.
I may have been wrong about the infiltration via a tunnel’. I’ve read it somewhere, but this account does not mention it.
From Rob:
silkworm, it seems (from the handful of articles I found from a google search) that Hizbollah put out some disinformation before the real story broke. If what you allege is the case, the media would have been all over it.
From Jabotinsky:
At the moment who started what is a matter of who stated what as no witnesses have spoken.
In any event, the question of who started what is only relevant from a propaganda point of view and that battle is determined by who can control the media.
No one knows personally what is information and what is disinformation and if the media had information that contradicted powerful interests they would have buried it, but in any event they don’t have any such information so until we hear from witnesses or unbiased observers of which at present we have none we do not know anything as to causation.
What we do know is that Israel has deployed all its military might in a way that almost certainly contravenes international law, which is in itself usually only applied not simply to criminals but criminals who lose.
The “who started it” issue which Howard picked up on in the news tonight (possibly sensing that all the ranting by Alan Jones and friends about “dual nationals” wouldn’t go down too well with Liberal voting Lebanese Christians – many of whom we now know from 4 corners are Liberal Party stackees) is a juvenile point anyway. Even if Hizbollah “started it”, it doesn’t affect the ethical question of whether the Israeli response is proportionate.
I think that’s the first time I’ve seen it argued that who starts the war is irrelevant to the morality of its conduct.
If Israel conscioulsy and mendaciously started this war, as silkworm suggests, its moral case vanishes, its claim of self-defence is exposed as a lie, and it stands exposed as a criminal aggressor.
And Jabotinsky, the media does not ‘bury’ information that materially damages the most powerful interest of them all – the government of the United States. Remember Abu Ghraib?
I think Israel has a right to defend itself. I deliberately avoid saying “its borders” because it’s very unclear what they are – even part of Sharon’s agenda was to fix “permanent borders”.
However, whether or not it’s aggression or self-defence, the same issues arise with regard to proportionality and damage to infrastructure and the destruction of innocent life.
If you accept the claim that “Hizbollah started it”, Rob, it does not give Israel licence to act outside the laws of war, or international law.
That’s my point.
That begs the question, Kim, of what is proportionate?
As Jabotinsky says, it’s a propaganda point.
Would you care to put Israel’s “moral case” for the destruction of airports, bridges, and entire suburbs where inevitably people innocent of involvement in the conflict will be killed, Rob?
Well, yes, but I’ve already pointed several times to Leinad’s contribution.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/20/a-lebanese-trigger-iran-war-and-the-neo-cons/#comment-115564
If you are arguing that the current Israeli strategy is “proportionate”, then please explain
(a) the necessity of destroying airports (since missiles are brought from Syria by road);
(b) the prudence of bombing Lebanese army installations;
(c) destroying entire communities and suburbs because Hizbollah are there.
In short, it’s not just disproportionate and wrong, it’s also bound to be counterproductive.
If the intention is as stated. Which is why, no doubt, Lefty E posits another theory as to the intention.
Though personally I think Lefty E is giving the Israeli government too much credit for rationality.
Rob,
We do not know who started this incident in a long-running war. Where also have you seen in the mainstream media any report contradicting the kidnapped soldiers story both on the the Gaza or Lebanon front? They merely report the propaganda line from Israel and America for which no factual evidence is currently available. We will find out eventually who started this incident in the long-running war and at that point moral judgements can be made. The only moral judgement we can currently make is that the Israeli action is morally obscene in its extreme disproportionality and your attempt to hang onto the question of causation is an attempt to avoid this truth.
Agreed.
If I may so so, Rob, you seem to have an odd appreciation of proportionality. It doesn’t mean “in proportion to the provocation” but “in proportion to what is necessary to achieve the just end”.
You seem to have the same sort of “if they attack us, we must respond with overwhelming force” notion that is far too common in that neck of the woods.
Mind you, the Bushies might have something to do with popularising it. What with the number of commentators over in the States at the moment arguing “if there is another s11 type attack, we should nuke Iran no matter if there’s a connection”. Which of course, is part of the twisted logic that was one of the many justifications for Iraq.
I also think the justification is mixed up in the minds of defenders of Olmert with “pre-emption”. But of course, despite the Bush Doctrine, that’s a hard one to argue these days.
Anyway, I’m going off to see Texas Tea play a gig tonight so I’ll bid everyone farewell.
“As Jabotinsky says, it’s a propaganda point.”
Who started it determines the justice and morality of what follows, on both sides. That seems to me to be morally and intellectually irreducible.
For the rest, if Hizbollah started this war (I think it did, but silkworm disagrees), I think Israel is morally entitled — indeed, obliged — to attempt to destroy it. To do so, it should destroy the infrastructure that supports it, the entities that comprise it, and the installations that make up its war machine. Israel’s targeting is guided by the best information available from its intelligence services, quite possibly the best in the world. That’s how you fight wars. You can’t fight them nicely. That’s why the morality of ‘who started it’ is so critical.
Tragically, civilians will be killed. But it is Hizbollah that deliberately chooses to locate its rocket launchers in civilian areas and homes. As we’re talking about morility, we might consider that.
Puh-lease, Rob. Haven’t you been watching the news? “Targetting” means the destruction of entire suburbs in Beirut where Hizbollah might have an office.
Again, the touching faith in intelligence and military technology.
What Israel is doing is very clearly the sort of “collective punishment” it’s become notorious for on the West Bank and in Gaza.
Anyway, I’m outa here.
Kenneth Roth from New York Review of Books cited in Steiner and Alston’s text on International Human Rights in Context on proportionality which:
“prohibits an incidental loss of civilian life that is ‘excessive’ compared to the military advantage gained”
The US successfully redefined this to ‘clearly excessive’ in the debate over the ICC.
This is the test and can anyone argue that Israel’s actions are proportionate?
A war crime also includes (Rome Statute of the ICC) acts:
“against civilian objects that are not miliary objectives”
Who can argue against the claim that Israel has committed this war crime?
It’s a notoriously slippery topic, but as interlocutors on this thread are playing the morality card, perhaps the question of the justice of Israeli actions could be assessed under a heading besides “proportionality”. After all, proportionality is a slippery component of this slippery topic.
But what about the issue of Probability of Success?
According to this criterion, which immediately precedes “proportionality” in Grotius’s codification of western thinking on the question of “just war”, “arms may not be used in a futile cause”.
This is a more interesting criterion than “proportionality” because it requires the belligerent to state his/her war aims. This is necessary so that the world may know how to assess whether aims are achievable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Just_War_tradition
Now, it is notorious that the Israelis have “form” in their implied desire to destroy Hezbollah, and that this form is losing form.
For Israel to satisfy any moral requirement to justify their current war, they would have to suggest how they may do the job more effectively this time than the last time.
To my knowledge, the Israelis haven’t done that.
And on the face of Israel’s task this time round seems more difficult than the last time because they have fewer allies and proxies this time than last time.
Now it may be argued by apologists for Israel that it is unrealistic to impose the condition of revelation of war aims on Israel.
And this may be true.
But if this is true, what’s the point of expending so much hot air about “morality” and “justice”?
For what it’s worth, I believe that Israel’s coming practical failure will sting them more than any moral disapprobation of their conduct.
Rob will, no doubt, as his comment above indicates.
Rob – the majority of the suburbs which are being reduced to rubble do not house rocket launchers, but Hizbollah offices. The rocket launchers are all further south closer to the border.
Anyway, I really must take myself out of here – I’m late.
This is no longer good law because it would preclude the powerless from ever doing anything. The whole Palestinian cause has been futile and would be unlawful if this was good law.
Not true Bartlby.
It all depends upon the realtionship between your means and your ends. The problem with the Palestinians is that they have been notoriously poor at aligning their ends with their means. the Palestinians are quite weak, but not powerless. It behooves them to act within the limits of their power.
And in any case, the Palestinian situation is better covered by issues of inalienable rights as expressed in the American Declaration of Independence.
This is so because they have been denied their sovereign rights and therefore cannot be expected to behave within the moral constraints imposed by just war theory on sovereign powers.
“Now it may be argued by apologists for Israel that it is unrealistic to impose the condition of revelation of war aims on Israel.”
But who argues this, Katz?
Israel made its terms — and war aims — clear a week ago:
“Jerusalem – Israel on Saturday laid out a set of demands to the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, which it said were its conditions for a ceasefire in Lebanon.
“Hezbollah must redeploy north of the Litani River. It must surrender its rocket arsenal to the Lebanese army, which must take up positions along the border with Israel,� Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Israeli television.
“If these conditions are met, Israel will agree to a ceasefire,� the minister said.
Katz,
I’m sorry but it is true and the American Declaration is not and never has or will be a part of international law. Palestinians went from one colonial power to another and have never possessed any sovereign rights that could be denied. Their right to resistance is based on other legal grounds; namely, Article 58 of the UN Charter which talks of the ‘equal rights and self-determination of peoples’.
What does this mean?
“The problem with the Palestinians is that they have been notoriously poor at aligning their ends with their means.”
Hamas and Hizbollah (the targets of the current operations) have always been quite unambiguous about their war ends – the elimination of the ‘Zionist entity’ the world knows as Israel. It’s true they don’t have the means to do it, but it hasn’t been for lack of trying.
Rob,
The head of the IDF has stated unequivocally that one of Israel’s aims is to ‘take Lebanon back twenty years’. This is a war crime as it is prohibited to take action:
“against civilian objects that are not miliary objectives”
Rob, those are not war aims, but terms for a ceasefire.
I agree with Kim. You’re displaying a lot of conceptual confusion. Would you care to define proportionality? Either in the abstract, or with regard to the concrete situation. I note you didn’t take up her earlier invitation to comment on various actions the Israelis are taking.
It’s difficult to reconcile claims made by Israeli figures that they want the Lebanese state to be strengthened and to respond to Hizbollah (for instance, Dr Sneh, Labour MK and former Deputy Minister of Defence on Lateline on Friday) with actions such as bombing Lebanese military bases. For instance.
More broadly, destroying basically half a city and rendering an eighth of the population displaced can hardly be described as incidental to a military aim, by any reasonable interpretation.
The Lateline interview with Sneh is here:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1693741.htm
Now, how is the Lebanese state to be in a position after the “campaign” is complete (whenever Condi judges they can declare “mission accomplished”?) to take on Hizbollah? It should have been in the Israeli national interest to build on the expulsion of the Syrian Army from Lebanon and the moves to democratisation and economic recovery evident over the last few years. Instead, as the Lebanese PM correctly states, the country lies smashed. In addition, some of the areas bombed have been districts inhabited largely by Maronite Christians who are relatively pro-Israeli. Whatever is going on cannot be aligned with a longer term aim of enabling the Lebanese state to police its own territory, which is what Sneh repeatedly called for. Not only is it disproportionate, it’s also indiscriminate, and in its indiscrimination, counter productive to what the alleged intentions behind the action are.
Do you have a link for that, Bartleby? I’d be interseted to know whether he was talking about the Hizbollah capability and infrastructure or Lebanon generally.
From Haaretz:
“The Israel Air Force continued its bombardment Friday night and Saturday morning in Lebanon, hitting some 70 targets.
Troops destroyed Hezbollah headquarters, six missile launchers, missile storage facilities, weapon storage facilities, communication lines, and over 40 rocket launch sites.”
That’s the kind of damage Kim was complaining about. It’s full-out war alright.
From Rob:
And what about the ‘Palestinian entity’? Who has been trying to eliminate this and who has had the power to do this? It has been the Palestinians who have been pushed into desert prisons, not Israelis into the sea.
Incredible, Rob. You blithely ignore the points about the destruction of Southern Beirut, and the displacement of an eighth of Lebanon’s population.
Not to mention Lefty E’s argument:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/20/a-lebanese-trigger-iran-war-and-the-neo-cons/#comment-116352
And I understand he’s recently back from a conference in the region.
It’s a waste of time arguing with you.
It’s hard to disagree with that.
But I’m sure you will, Rob. Nevertheless, the debate becomes pointless unless you engage with what’s put to you, rather than your repetition of quasi-official governmental talking points, so I think I’ll go and read a book instead.
Army Chief of Staff Lt-Gen Dan Halutz said the Israeli military would “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years” if the soldiers were not returned.
This has been quoted in numerous non-Arab, pro-Western sources. He can only be referring to civilian infrastructure and hence he and his country is perpetrating a war crime.
Mark, I have to say I agree with Sneh. Israel has had enough. Whatever placations it makes, it’s rewarded with terror and war. It’s a ruthless enemy, totally committed to the survival of its country and the protection of its people. All the world’s militaries know this truth: don’t fuck with the Israelis. Hamas and Hizbollah know it, yet they still provoked the reactions they knew they were going to get.
As GOC Northern Command Major General Udi Adam said, this isn’t the time to be counting the dead. That time will come, but it’s not now.
“We must change our way of thinking. Human life is important, but we are at war, and it costs human lives. We won’t count the dead at present, only at the end. We’ll cry for the dead and will encourage the fighters. There are more places like Meron A-Ras, and unfortunately we’ll have to reach them.”
We’re caught by the uncontrollable logic of war, and we’re just going to have to wait until it plays out. If after it ends, however it ends, Israel is found to have committed war crimes, that’s the time for the reckoning. Nothing can stop what is going on now. And (pace silkworm) Hizbollah started it.
From Haaretz.com:
What placations?
So, at last, your confession, we have power and we’ll ‘fuck’ you regardless of anything.
A reformed semiotician like you, Rob, should have been more alert to the subtext of your metaphor.
“It’s hard to disagree with that.
But I’m sure you will, Rob. ”
True, I already have done. The argument is quite incoherent, AFAICS. The IDF’s current operations have nothing to do with the West Bank, and Israel has (thankfully) given up on its dreams of territorial expansion. And, of course, it is in Israel’s interests for the moderates to be strengthened, which is why it was so dismayed by the election of Hamas over Fatah, with whom it thought it could do fruitful business along the withdrawal process originally set out by Sharon.
These charming quotes give new meaning to the term Christine employed near the top of the thread – warporn.
It’s disturbing that a number of people seem to be enjoying the sturm und drang of it all.
Problems in the Olmert family. From Eurozine.com:
Olmerts Frau Alisa, eine Künstlerin, die sich in der linksgerichteten “Peace Now”-Bewegung engagiert, erzählte kürzlich in einem Interview, der Vorfall habe die tiefste Krise in ihren dreißig Ehejahren ausgelöst. Die Kinder teilen die politische Einstellung ihrer Mutter. Ein Sohn hat sogar den Dienst in der israelischen Armee verweigert. Vor den letzten Wahlen sagte Alisa Olmert, sie habe noch nie für ihren Mann gestimmt. Diesmal hat sie ihn gewählt, denn er habe einen “tiefen Sinneswandel” vollzogen. Wenn auch dreißig Jahre zu spät, wie sie bedauernd meinte.
I would never claim the Israelis were anything other than ruthless, Bartleby. Comes of living under siege for 60 years, I guess.
Sheesh, Rob.
The argument about the West Bank goes to the fact that the Israelis have form with this strategy.
And strengthening Fatah was encouraged by destroying the economic and governmental infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority over a period of years, as you’ve already been asked? The Bantustanisation of the West Bank, constant checkpoints, etc, and eventually to its own economic cost, the multiplication of difficulties involved in Palestinian “guest workers” entering Israel increased the unemployment rate in the West Bank to around 50%. At the same time, the government buildings of the PA were being intermittently bombed or blown up. Not to mention frequent incursions by the Israeli military. Hamas is the blowback Israel got from the destruction of the Hamas government.
Don’t you remember the shelling of Arafat’s compound? That wasn’t the beginning of it, and nor was it the end.
Not least Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Mark. But of course I know what/you you mean.
I’m not enjoying it at all. I wish Hizbollah had never launched their attack on Israel, nor Hamas.
Here’s the best of the Lebanese bloggers, who has rather more nuance than the anti-Israelis here. And with that, I’m out.
Whose lives are most important?
Doron Rosenblum writing in Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741331.html
No doubt!
Even Olmert’s wife wouldn’t vote for him and his son won’t serve in the army, but people still admire ruthlessness after they’ve spent most of their time talking about morality?
From Eurozine.com:
In 2004, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben re-interpreted the US “war against all evil” as a symbolic gesture that envisions an alteration of the political landscape. Two months after the September attacks in 2001, the Bush administration – in the midst of what it perceived as a state of emergency – authorised the indefinite imprisonment of non-citizens suspected of terrorist activities. This policy, according to Agamben, should be understood as “The State of Exception”,[2] a powerful strategy that enables the transformation of a contemporary democracy into a civil dictatorship. Agamben argues that the state of exception, which was meant to be a provisional measure, has become part of the everyday fabric.
America is now such a ‘civic dictatorship’ and Israel has been one for the last sixty years and that explains its ruthlessness.
A wave of suicide bombings and hundreds killed in Israel might have had something to do with it, don’t you think, Mark? You seem to imagine Israel has never been under attack from anywhere or anything or anybody.
Arguing here is like waving in water; but someone has to do it.
But Rob, there’s an enormous difference between stating a demand and enforcing it.
Bartleby, we agree on the important issue: Palestine isn’t a sovereign state and therefore not subject to the constraints of just war theory.
I repeat, this statement of yours:
is incorrrect. The whole Palestinian cause is not futile. Consider the creation of a self-governing entity. This is an advance of their stateless condition. Just because they haven’t achieve yet what they desire doesn’t mean they haven’t made progress or that, given favourable circumstances and intelligent policy, they’ll never achieve their ultimate goal.
My observation is that the Palestinians have been quite unintelligent in pursuit of their ambitions for some time.
As I think I made clear, Bartleby, my view is that Israel is quite ruthless in its defence of its territory and the protection of its people.
Israel ain’t some kind of national saint (it would have been obliterated decades ago if it had been), but it has the rights of it in this particular imbroglio.
Boedicca, I have no special brief for Hezbollah or Hamas. I’m just trying to understand it all and to share information and ideas.
I do think Israel, as an Israeli said on the radio today, seem to respond to every problem with extreme force and their use of such force is not in their own long-term best interests.
Hezbollah has the distressing habit of targeting civilian populations which is why they are deemed a terrorist organisation by the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Canada, Israel and Australia but not by the EU. The EU’s position seems to be strategic in relation to possible peace talks, but they do condemn its terrorist actions.
Hezbollah have a political wing with representatives in the Lebanese parliament, including cabinet. They also have considerable business operations and provide services to the Shia population, including schools and hospitals.
The Shia population is said to be the biggest single religious group, I think about a third of the population. They do seem to be independent of Syria and Iran in terms of what they decide to do, and I understand they now pay for much but not all of the assistance they get from those sources.
In bombing Hezbollah offices in Beirut Israel is clearly trying to exterminate the entire organisation. This seems preposterous to me and bound to fail.
Rob, Katz makes some good points about ‘just war’ theory. But I do think that Hezbollah’s initial actions provide an initial frame to subsequent actions. Thus it is entirely worthy of condemnation that they attacked population centres with missiles at the same time as the initial incursion which saw them kill eight Israeli soldiers and capture two. The latter action seems to me to be motivated largely by prisoner exchange. This was mentioned in an early BBC report. After all they had success with this strategy only two years ago. Whatever you think of that action the targeting of civilian populations with missiles is entirely reprehensible.
While those actions provide the circumstantial reference for Israel’s response, any action by Israel has to be considered also as a new act in its own terms.
The Israelis are clearly using this ‘war on terror’ meme, which they seem to take as justifying any action whatsoever. Clearly it wouldn’t justify massacres, for example. Most of the world thinks that trashing the whole country, smashing its infrastructure and its economy, is not justified apart from being rather careless and reckless about who gets hurt in the process.
You keep going on about Hezbollah embedding itself in the population. However evil this may be it doesn’t justify killing innocent people. If a cop has his gun pointed at a baddie but the baddie has a damsel by the throat using her as a shield with a gun in her back, what does the cop do? I don’t know, but it is clear what he doesn’t do.
They’re too powerless to have any intelligent ambitions. From a rational point of view, they should simply kill themselves. This is what they’re doing as ’suicide bombers’. So they are rational after all!
“My observation is that the Palestinians have been quite unintelligent in pursuit of their ambitions for some time.”
Katz, allow me to agree with you wholeheartedly on that. The Palestinians would have had their own state ages ago if they had played their cards more astutely.
“You keep going on about Hezbollah embedding itself in the population. However evil this may be it doesn’t justify killing innocent people.”
Fair point, Brian, but the other side of it is — what is Israel supposed to do? Leave the rockets and launchpads alone, so that they can kill more Israelis? OK, this is the horrible logic of war. But Israel is not obligated to protect the lives of Lebanese human shields, willling or no. It is obligated to protect the lives of Israelis.
Tell me this: if it spared the former and neglected the latter, would it have acted as it should as a government?
This is sheer propaganda!
Not at all, Rob. What I’m calling for is a proportionate and rational response.
Given that the road actually taken appears to me to be neither proportionate nor rational in achieving what the stated aims of the Israeli government are, I tend to agree with Lefty E that another game is being played.
And so does David Clark, former Labour foreign office advisor, writing in the Guardian:
My emphasis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1822097,00.html
Brian writes:
Precisely. I’m yet to see any justification of all this from you, Rob, in terms of proportionality. All you appear to be saying now is that Israel is “ruthless”. Well fine. Is that right? If so, you’re obliged logically to justify their choice of targets and their destruction of civilian infrastructure and targetting of entire residential districts in Southern Beirut. Of course, it’s impossible to justify this morally. So you are forced back on to bare assertion or some sort of emotional argument that having been struck themselves, they are “morally right” to lash out in response and damn the consequences. It’s unsustainable as anything other than a “might makes right” argument, Rob.
I’d be interested to see if you could make the alleged moral case succinctly and with reference to legal and ethical principles.
“What is its territory?”
Simple answer. The territory mandated to Israel by the UN in 1947, subject to Resolution 242.
“Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.
As I’ve said before, when did the Arab nations and Hamas and Hizbollah offer Israel this?
At least you offer somewhat more argument than Peter Coleman does in Quadrant when poo-poohing the support of a leading Jewish (and conservative) historian for a binational state, Rob.
Coleman goes on, to no good purpose other than to repeat a few cliches at the end of the review about “old Europe”.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=2117
Anyway, I had a quick squizzy through the Quadrant archives to see if you’d written anything on Israel. One article was promisingly entitled “The New Anti-Semitism”. But on closer inspection, it proved not to be about Jews or Israel at all, but the sort of rant about TEH EVILS OF THE LEFT we’ve come to expect and love from you, Rob.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/archive_details_list.php?article_id=749
My only other comment is that I think your comments boil down to emotional identification with Israel, and either ignore or skirt around issues of strategy, history and fact.
You old post-modernist, you!
“If so, you’re obliged logically to justify their choice of targets and their destruction of civilian infrastructure and targetting of entire residential districts in Southern Beirut.”
Not having access to Israeli intelligence, I don’t know what the rationale was. Nor would I expect, at this stage, Israel to provide it. If there are war crimes here, they should be determined and punished post-facto. But I’m not inclined to rush to immediate judgement by extrapolating from TV footage of destroyed buildings, which is all I’ve seen, to claims about whole suburbs being laid waste.
By the way, how can Gore Vidal as an American who bemoans what he sees as the betrayal of the ideals of the 1776 Revolution be described accurately as “anti-American”? Those same ideals which you laud at the end of your article. Am I anti-American because as an American I oppose American foreign policy?
With you, Rob, it’s always about emotional identifications not about reason. But then, that’s the mark of a true conservative. I think you need to read some Strauss so you can disguise it better, though. Save you the trouble of defending Enlightenment values, etc. But you’re already heading in that direction with the rhetoric about ruthlessness and right, I guess.
A bit of a hermeneutics of suspicion there, Rob? Yet Israeli intelligence is holy writ?
Anyway, apparently I have a mission to enlighten Comrade Bird about the nature of ressentiment so in the hours before I sleep, I should re-apply myself to the study of Nietzsche.
http://catallaxyfiles.com/?p=1935#comment-127717
It started a war in conjunction with Jordan in order to ensure it never abided by this Resolution. This is now an established historical fact that only propagandists dispute.
Kim: I admit to an emotional identification with Israel. I don’t defend all it does, and condemn some of what it has done. But in the end, on the big issues, you eventually have to come down on one side or the other. I’m on Israel’s. Where are you, as a matter of interest?
I can’t accept the dilemma, Rob. If they regard themselves as human they must respect all human life. So if they think it’s a choice between one or the other they need to think harder and find a different way.
When states start killing the innocent their legitimacy comes into question IMHO.
I’ve always admired Tony Judt’s work, Kim. A bi-national state sounds as though it’s worth thinking about.
I’m off to bed.
Tony Judt is a very good historian, Brian, and just for Rob’s information, one avidly opposed to Soviet Marxism and its impact on Western intellectuals. But still a very careful and illuminating historian.
In fact Judt is only one of many Jews, both within and outside Israel, who advocate a binational solution. Of course, the practical possibility of this is less than it was. But there are many Jews and Israelis who support a secular democracy with equal rights for all in Israel.
Rob, as a matter of cultural identification, as someone who comes from a long line of Portuguese Marranos and who has lived in America, Australia and Europe, I would be tempted to identify with the Israelis. But I don’t think that the choice is mandatory. I’m more cosmopolitan in my outlook and I would prefer to place myself on the side of those everywhere who seek justice. In fact there are many contacts between Israelis and Palestinians and Lebanese who want to work together for peace and justice. It’s those people, and that imaginary transnational space if you like, who tug at my heart strings.
Bartleby: Resolution 242 was passed after the Six Day War. What are you taling about with regard to Jordan?
Brian: that is the dilemma. It is not possible to ignore it.
And, incidentally, part of that imaginary space is intermediated by, and takes form in, cyberspace:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/19/lebanese-israeli-blogging/
As discussed the other day.
But I must return to Nietzsche! Goodnight!
Alzo — finger me one state that has not killed the innocent, even in a just war. That’s a tough criterion of legitimacy you’ve laid out.
Give us a list, Rob!
Sure.
The settlements in the Sinai.
The settlements in Gaza.
The settlements in the West Bank.
Criminal enterprises all.
Bartleby, btw, I’ve been fixing up the code in your comments. When you want to excerpt a comment from someone else, you need to click the /b-quote button after the bit you’ve snipped to separate it out from your own words. Otherwise, Wordpress will close the tag at the end of all the text entered and it becomes difficult to tell where your quote finishes and your commentary begins. Just a tip on html.
Goodnight from me!
Pax.
xxxx
Bartleby: Resolution 242 was passed after the Six Day War. What are you taling about with regard to Jordan?
I’m sorry but I thought you were talking about something else as 242 doesn’t qualify the Partition plan, so why did you suggest it did? Do you think that Israel should be in occupation of the lands allotted to it by the the 1947 Partition Plan? Its war in conjunction with Jordan prevented this plan being enacted.
So what you’re saying is that when Israel removes a few caravans on hilltops in the Westbank you can live in virtue? The war continues, thanks, Rob.
So your position is that withdrawal from the territories will not lead to peace, Bartleby? Nothing will, then. As you say, the war continues.
Good piece from David Clark, Mark, hadnt seen that.
Another relevant point, and one which addresses Rob’s ‘emotional’ refusal to see the links with the West Bank: Mahmoud Abbas was (I wouldnt say ‘is’ now) in the process of a Hamas-undermining referendum on a two-state solution.
Suffice to say, this has been absolutely scotched by Israel’s viscious and cowardly assault on a moderate – and basically defenceless – neighbouring Arab regime. Abbas has no chance now. Israel never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity… The last thing they want is a peace partner, as Clark puts it.
Me, I dont mind Rob’s emotional attachment to Israel. I have one too – when I hear the refuseniks speaking of their absolute committment and willingness to serve defending the green line, Im with them. And when they refuse to serve in the criminal enterprises in the West bank (good term) I salute them again. They are people of true honour and moral courage.
The problem is Rob cant logically reconcile his two positions – one completely swamps the other. Honestly, If Israel dropped a nuke on Syria, I reckon we’d still be hearing apologia here; so there’s no point debating.
But having just been in an Arab country, I would like to try to tell you something of the character of people I met there, though it will, necessarily, be a generalisation. Arab people are incredibly friendly, family oriented, and small-business minded in a way that is almost spiritual, or philosophical. Free enterprise and self-reliance is, if anything, far more deeply embedded in the mindset of ordinary people in the Arab world than here in Australia. Frankly, Arab people would seem, to me, to be quite natural economic allies of western liberals. I reckon they’d be bastard hard to convert to western social democratic notions.
But, go on, keep imagining they’re the ‘enemies of all civilisation’, RWDBs.
Sinai was vacated because Egypt won the ‘73 war. The removal of a few settlements in Gaza so that it can be turned into a cheap, open-air prison camp is not withdrawal. There is moreover no intention to withdraw from all the territories on the West Bank. So you want war to continue, yes, that’s what you’ve been saying all night and I’m glad to see you finally confessed it.
“Sinai was vacated because Egypt won the ‘73 war.”
What? Talk about re-writing history. Israel came closer to losing it in its early days than they often admit, but Egypt didn’t win it. After Sharon established a bridgehead over the Suez, the Egyptian armies were surrounded and it was only the intervention of the US, insisting on a ceasefire, that prevented them from being annihilated. Begin pulled the settlements out of the Sinai because Carter brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. The price was Israeli withdrawal, peace between the two nations, not to mention massive amounts of US aid to Egypt. There were Nobel peace prize given for it, remember?
And Lefty, please spell out for me the precise connections between the West Bank and the current operations in Lebanon. I’m dense, but I’m not seeing them.
Well put, Lefty E.
Rob, it’s been spelled out for you several times. It’s the same Israeli strategy – weaken moderate forces through destroying infrastructure, governance and “collective punishment” so you can say you have no “partner for peace” and thus retain the right to define your own borders and continue to alienate land in defiance of international law.
Read the David Clark article which was linked to.
For a conservative who often decries the state (for instance when people suggest some social policy innovation), you retain a strange faith in the state in its more primitive incarnation – as sovereign maker of war.
Nietzsche:
“Frankly, Arab people would seem, to me, to be quite natural economic allies of western liberals. I reckon they’d be bastard hard to convert to western social democratic notions.”
Spot and explain the contradiction, Lefty E.
What contradiction, Rob?
Kim, I’m beginning to despair of this but let me put it this way.
1. Hizbollah militants infiltrate Israel from south Lebanon, kill several soldiers and adbuct two.
2. IDF soldiers pursue them into Lebanon and are killed.
3. Israel regards this act (rightly or wrongly) as an act of war launched from Lebanese territory.
4. The perpetrator organisation — Hizbollah — is a member of the Lebanese government.
5. Israel (rightly or wrongly) holds the Lebanese government responsible.
6. israel launches reprisals.
7. The war is on — unhappily.
Amidst all of that, and allowing for the ‘rights or wrongs’, what has this got to do with the West Bank?
“What contradiction, Rob?”
Now I know you’re playing games, Kim. Good joke, though.
Good night.
I presume everyone is still in bed after the long debates last night.
I hadn’t heard about Judt but he’s one of many Jewish voices highly critial of the zionist state. Remember zionism had been condemned as anti-Torah by most Orthodox rabbis but thre are still Orthdox opponents of Israel who support the Palestinians and even Hamas
http://www.nkusa.org/
And here’s a jewish voice that argues that Israel can’t be a jewish state because it doesn’t abide by basic Jewish (Torah) principles
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2006/07/20/01210.html
As for accepting Israel’s 1947 borders as per UN the partition plan, I can’t see Israel accepting that. It’s a retreat from what they gained in 1948
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_UN_Partition_Plan
Nevertheless I think the 2 state solution is dead now. Israel had never really wanted it, the Palestinians had gradually been dragged to agreeeing to it, even Hamas. And I would agre that the best solution would be a single secular, democratic state in the Cisjordan. Of course it wouldn;t be called israel anymore but probbaly Palestine. I would like to think that it may pave the way towards to a further unification of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and JOrdan into a secular, democratic United Levantine Republic which would resemble a goal of many Arab nationalists in the Levant in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. As a secualr state this republic would include the many sects of Islam, Christianity, Judaism already in those territories as well Bahais, atheists, agnostics and anyone else, inlcuding Raelians
http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=19567&sec=42&cont=all
Once Again, Truth is the First Casualty of War
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14129.htm
And
Fury Grips Syria Over Lebanon Attacks
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14135.htm
That’s just silly Bartleby.
For a start, only a vanishingly tiny minority of Palestinians have ever donned the explosives belt. So your quite intemperate summation of Palestinian self-perceptions is factually incorrect.
Before you confront an enemy you seek to understand that enemy.
Here are three important facts about Israel:
1. Israel has a sophisticated system of representative democracy.
2. There are several deep fissures in Israeli society based on religion, ethnicity and ideology.
3. Palestinian Arabs constitute a significant proportion of the voting population of Israel (almost 20%).
Hamas’s ambitions vis a vis Israel are maximalist. They wish to destroy the state of Israel. It should be clear that Palestine does not have the means to do that with military violence or with terrorsm. These stated ambitions, and these methods, simply thrust Israelis together in mutual defence and they outrage world opinion.
Far more effective would be to adopt a stance of “no peace, no war”.
At the same time, encourage nations, institutions and individuals who have expressed rhetorical support for Palestinian aspirations to put their money where their mouths are by contributing to a “baby bonus” scheme for the Arab citizens of Israel. A “Battle of the Prams” would not be outrageously expensive to fund.
Now it would be naive to expect that the more nationalist and chauvinistic groups in Israel would accept this apparent attempt to “breed the Jews out of Israel”. Thus, one would expect confrontation long before Israel was actually full of arab babies.
However, the chauvinist response would be likely to drive a wedge between them and the more liberal elements in Israeli politics. It may also demonstrate to the world the darker, unacceptable face of Israeli chauvinism, thus helping to restore the position of the Palestinians in the eyes ofthe world.
One big imponderable is that the Israeli Arabs may refuse to agree to make subsidised babies. But that would signify that they are reasonably happy with the status quo. And if that’s the case, why shouldn’t the rest of the Palestinians join them in a single state that contained Jews and Palestinians?
Bartleby:
and the word “Reparations” springs immediately to mind …… However, given the rapidity with which the whole matter is escalating and spreading (East Asia is now involved, albeit indirectly so far) any talk of war crimes, reparations and negotiations …. and with all due respect to Katz, any “Battle of the Prams” …. is likely to be of only academic interest to historians in the victor countries several decades hence.
Start digging fast and don’t worry about the blisters!
Graham Bell,
If I believed that humans were goingto blow themselves up in the nearish future, I’d reorder my priorities quite radically. But I don’t believe that a nuclear snuff fest is at all likely.
The Palestinian-Israeli “Battle of the Prams” would be almost entirely symbolic, like Gandhi’s collection of a handful of illegal salt. The political consequences of the oppressor nation’s defence of the indefensible come much more quickly than a great mountain of contraband salt, or creche-loads of Arab ankle biters.
Rob, there is a memory apart from yours that does actually exist prior to 28 June 2006. First you need to go back to the 1982 invasion.
http://www.counterpunch.org/Cockburn07212006.html
.
So, fast foward to the present:
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76854
June 25th, Hamas (whatever) kidnaps an Israeli soldier. Hezbolla also spits the dummy in solidarity with Hamas on June 28, this incident cannot be viewed in isolation to the above.
It seems always ok for Israel to kidnap people but not others. There are some 9,000 Palestinian and Arab in Israeli jails. (Geneva conventions take a dimmer view of kidnapping civilians rather than soldiers BTW.) To say you don’t understand the linkages, and fixate on an act of Hezbollah as if that alone justifies what Israel is doing now is to say the least disengenuous, and it follows almost exactly the US MSM/Congressional line of self righteous “war on terror” narrative, which in turn is making the solutions harder to find while exacerbating more Arab and Islamic blowback for the future. The US cannot be an honest broker when it has so clearly sided with Isreal.
Now, if the client states–Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia etc fall, with this accelerating blowback, and more blowback again with an attack on Iran in the near future, from people who perceive all this as an attack on Islam: then watch out for Israel’s survival then, cos you “ain’t seen nothing yet.” At that stage, I for one will find it exceedingly difficult not to point the finger at people and one moron in particular who simplistically intoned: “Get Hezbollah to stop this shit” but ignored the Israeli “shit”
What hits me as I read through these posts is just how comfortable you all are, pontificating about how bad war is, and how wrong Israel is – and there is still no strong outrage about what Hezbollah is doing, has been doing for years. Why aren’t you condemning Hezbollah?
Why aren’t you saying “Hezbollah must stop smuggling rockets into southern lebanon, dismantel any existing ones and destroy them, stop firing them into Israel, return kidnapped Israel soldiers, stop the brainwashing of it’s men, women and children to hate Jews and Israel and stop blaming all of their problems on that nation and actually grow up, mature, turn their faces from war and seek to build a prosperous, peaceful nation.”
Again, I have to ask, what have those people actually done for humanity apart from give us the suicide bomber?
I would say Israel has been quite patient in dealing with these people despite the years… decades…. of suicide bombers and now this, the indiscriminate missile attacks. Everyone here goes boohoo over some innocent lebanese dying. Yes, it is sad, in that we’re on the other side of the world so can be compassionate in an abstract way sad. But were you going boohoo when some innocent Israelis got blown up? Why the tears for one group of people and not the other? I thought you were humanists who loved everyone? Remember suicide bombings in Israel has been going on for years and this war only started last week.
Hezbollah have brought this on their heads. It is extremely unpleasant to watch the consequences, I am disturbed and upset by the images on the news, just like you are, but they only have themselves to blame. Their charter states they want to see Israel destroyed. They have chosen the path of death and destruction all by themselves (Israel did not make them write it.) Shake your head at their foolishness, condemn their wilfulness, their belligerance, arrogance and obstinence, but don’t cry for them. They are reaping what they sowed.
This misunderstands the situation on the ground. Just because Hezbollah may be in the moral wrong doesn’t mean that they are unintelligent.
Hezbollah aren’t losing. They’re dodging the bullet. Civilians are dying and fleeing. But Israel won’t be able to keep all civilians out of South Lebanon. And Israel has made a whole new group of enemies. This means that Israel will be forced to fight a counter-guerrilla war. And Israel will lose.
boudicca re:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/20/a-lebanese-trigger-iran-war-and-the-neo-cons/#comment-115464
Lefty E:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/20/a-lebanese-trigger-iran-war-and-the-neo-cons/#comment-116293
Myself:
There are others direct and implied which you seem to be ignoring. If you want hatred of Hezbollah/Hamas/Iraqi insurgents you need to visit the RWDB hate sites, starting with Dick Cheney and work your way down. For the record, I condemn Hezbolla’s actions, I also condemn Israel’s massive over-reaction. By the number of innocent casualties and those imprisoned without due process, condemnation can be apportioned.
A bit late for that now. See my timeline above on Lebanon and the 1982 invasion. Israel CREATED Hezbollah.
What has Israel (and the US for that matter) done in ME politics for Palestine and Iraq except create suicide bombers and an unbelievable mess? When a people have lost all hope it is understandable even if morally repugnant, that some will chose to die in this way for a reason, rather than accept total subjugation in their own land. It sends a message of fanaticism, but it is also a reaction to real or perceived oppression. Deal with it by putting youself in their shoes, in Monachem Begin’s shoes for one minute.
There are tears for both sides. Human life is the most precious thing we have and many here would agree with the Jewish Rabbi who said to Schindler in Poland around 1940, “to save one life is to save the whole world.” I think that was a Scriptural saying.
I assume you are not referring to Lebanese civilians. You might like to consider the possibility that Israel “reaps what it sows” from its policies as well.
Great thread.
I agree muchly with Peter’s skewering of the ‘but they started it’ defense.
Peter, the timeline you hve lifted from Alexander Cockburn is conspiratorial, tendentious rubbish.
As a corrective, here is Melanie Phillips:
As for Israel ‘creatring’ Hizbollah, that’s nonsense. Hizbollah is funded, supplied, trained and equipped by Iran and Syria. There are currently 100 Iranian soldiers (from the IRGC) in Lebanon assisting Hizbollah with its missile attacks.
Rob, did Hezbollah exist before 1982 in Lebanon? You have no idea of semantic nuance other than your own?
Yes, in a sense you are right, Peter. Hizbollah was formed by an amalgamation of various jihadist and resistance groups following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon (and refused to disarm, as required by the UN, after the latter’s withdrawal in 2000). Inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and cleaving to the teachings of Ayotollah Komeini, it was an Iranian proxy from day one.
Nuance!
Peter Kemp, the potted Palestine/Israel history you have given is neither balanced nor honest. Take this for example:
“.. Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure.”
Now this is untrue. Hamas was elected on a platform, which I linked to above, that specifically rejects a negotiated settlement and which calls for Israel to be destroyed and Greater Palestine established.
Here is a excerpt from the The Times from May this year:
“THE Palestinian President seized the initiative in his power struggle with Hamas yesterday by threatening to call a referendum unless it agreed to a two-state solution.
President Abbas gave the Islamist Government 10 days to back a proposal that recognises Israel, or face a national vote on the issue 30 days later.
The move appeared to wrong-foot Hamas, whose refusal to recognise Israel and renounce violence has led to international isolation and the freezing of millions of dollars in international aid. ” see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,251-2198197,00.html
So even the Palestinian President is frustrated by the unwillingness of Hamas to seek a two state solution.
Since the above event headlined the world news reports in most of Australia’s media for several days, I can only assume that are well aware of it and that you are being wantonly dishonest.
What is your motive? Why do you insist in smearing Israel? What do you hope to gain from nuclear fearmongering?
Rob, that was the best emotive hate mongering you could find in place of argument? (Michelle Malkin and Anne Coulter are better–to save time in future)
The underlined bits tell it all.” Snake–Syria–Iran–toppled–evil–free world–Islamic facism (meaning us always good they always bad–axis of evil–if you’re not with us you’re against us–war on terrorism–fear fear–vote for us– yadda yadda)
The WW2 old facist line was portrayed somewhat humourously by Mel Brooks:
That Neo-con line, above is not that different, except for the humour (lack therof).
Britain calls for restraint and describes Israel’s actions as disproportionate:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1826969,00.html
And the Economist calls the crisis:
http://www.economist.com/leaders/
Are we the only country aside from America where otherwise intelligent people fall so easily for good/evil stereotyping and clashes of civilisation nonsense?
Makes me wonder some about the universal values we’re supposedly defending.
Steve, the whole thing was crap, but what else do you expect from Alexander Cockburn? It’s like citing Noam Chomsky.
Not as simple as you think Steve M, like power politics with Abbas trying to sideline Hamas. Nuance again, to reject it as a part of refusal of recognition of Israel as a bargaining lever:
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060622-080839-1255r
Have a look at some recent history:
http://www.shinesforall.com/archives/2006/04/hamass_two-stat.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/38D0EFC2-8FF6-43A3-BA5D-0BC1E5357927.htm
Hamas wants a two state solution but it’s playing hardball much more than Arafat did.
Steve
A bit of selective reading of the Times article you linked to. I’ll do you the favour of reproducing it below.
Personally, I’ve never found any surplus of nuance in this issue.
A two state solution? Spare me. Check out Hamas’ charter, Peter, if you’ve not already done so.
The two-state solution is dead, anyway, at least into the mid-term, thanks to Hamas and Hizbollah.
Shorter Rob: Howard said we’ll never never have a GST, it’s in the policy true blue. I believe him.
Spare me.
Hamas have stated that they will accept a two-state solution if a majority of the Palestinian people support it in the referendum Abbas has initiated. Of course, that move, which is of course in Israel’s interest, may now be in abeyance due to the recent actions.
Oh I see Anthony beat me to it.
Do you read about what’s actually going on, Rob, rather than assume that the various parties’ positions are eternally frozen in time? I suppose you think the ALP will immediately socialise industry if it wins the next election because it’s committed to do so by its charter.
Do you have a link for that, Kim?
I read it in the Economist today, Rob, but you’d have to be a subscriber to get online access.
The Times article Anthony is quoting from seems to be covering the same ground.
Not so clear-cut, it seems, Kim.
So that’s a yes, Kim Do you?
Huh? Do I what, Rob?
iot was in reply to your ‘Do you read what’s actually going on’ and my link to the Hamas-does-not-actually-support-a-two-state-solution story.
But it was a cheap shot so I withdraw it.
My typing is going to hell. It not iot.
Ok, I’m still confused anyway!
Israel has just taken out two (anti-Hezbollah) TV stations, run by Maronites – clearly to conceal the level of atrocities against Lebanese civilians.
It appears they learned their lesson from 1996, when they were forced to a cease fire after appalling the world by massacring 100 Lebanese civilians in the village of Qana.
My feeling is the Lebanese army is now well within its rights to retailiate. See how that Butcher Olmert’s ratings go then when Christians start shooting at them.
Meanwhile, the British have clearly seen and had enough of Israel’s latest foray in conflict-promotion in the Middle East. Here’s Foreign Office Minister Kim Howell
‘The destruction of the infrastructure, the death of so many children and so many people: these have not been surgical strikes. If they are chasing Hizbollah, then go for Hizbollah. You don’t go for the entire Lebanese nation.’ The minister added: ‘I very much hope that the Americans understand what’s happening to Lebanon.’
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1826969,00.html
Call me a flawed human being, but I couldn’t help laughing at this.
That attack had me baffled Lefty E, thanks for the interpretation, there can be no other logical reason given Israeli intel/accuracy prowess.
And it seems the Israelis are saying they have permission for more butchery for another week.
Interesting article here on Israeli surprise on failure of their air force against Hexbollah.
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/06/front2453938.0986111113.html
There’s that new asymmetric paradigm again.
So now the US could be alone in refusing a ceasefire at the UNSC, somehow I think another week is going to do really substantial long term geopolitical damage to Israel and the US.
The typo on reflection seems appropriate, “hex” could be the word, so I’ll leave it be.
I don’t suppose Hamas has internal disagreements about a two state solution? It seems unlikely given how all terrorist organisations are so given to evil-oriented groupthink.
I ask in seriousness.
Could be, Michael. There must be some hard-heads among them. A ceasefire deal in Gaza seems to be emerging — pretty much the same one as Israel very carefully floated in the first two or three days of the crisis.
The article Rob links to above says:
“Palestinian minister Abdel Rahman Zeidan told the BBC the Hamas-Fatah document did not in any way recognise the state of Israel.
“There is no agreement between the Palestinians on specifically this phrase. You will not find one word in the document clearly stating the recognition of Israel as a state. Nobody has agreed to this. This was not on the table. This was not in the dialogue,” he said. ”
So regardless of what Kim, Kempie and co would have us believe, Hamas does NOT recognise the right of Israel to exist. Rather, they support the annihilation of Israel and the creation of Greater Palestine as per Hitler and Greater Germany.
steve, is it possible for you to avoid distorting people’s arguments for once? I didn’t say they did. I said they were making noises about accepting the results of Abbas’ referendum.
Since you see everything in pure black and white, perhaps you’d care to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?
Easy-peasy, Kim.
1. Arab nations and Palestinians accept the right of Israel to exist.
2. Peace treaties between Israel and neighbouring states.
3. Terrorist organisations forswear terrorism, reject foregn support.
4. Palestine established in West Bank and Gaza.
5. Return of the Golan Heights to Syria, per treaty.
6. No right of return; but…
7. Compensation for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
Now why aren’t I the UN Secretary-General?
Kim: “…perhaps you’d care to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?…”
Increasingly it seems to me that the only real way to solve the I/P problem in a way that has a viable future for all concerned, is to adopt a sort of paradigm switch of nearly sci-fi dimensions. What I mean is, things simply can’t go on this way, in the accepted format and vocabulary, without things like the current horrors flaring up on a regular basis from now til Judgement Day –which will likely come a whole lot faster if this shit is allowed to fester and continue.
(Before I go on, I’d just like to say this has been a really interesting thread, full of useful info and debating points both scored and rebutted for all sides, as well as the more fringe opinions getting an airing. The fact that I am not a jot wiser, and no more confident that a fair solution exists even after absorbing all this info, just tells me how royally fucked the whole setup is. And I’d also say –not that anyone cares– that all the countries and groups involved in this horror have a lot to answer for. Nobody looks good here, everyone’s got their just grievances and their dark sins, too. May God forgive them.)
More than anything, I cannot believe how much sorrow, blood and sheer deafening noise has been made over a piece of land not much bigger than New Jersey. If aliens were trying to understand this planet’s politics just by tracking the amount of headlines generated per topic, they could be forgiven for thinking the Levant is the largest, most populous and powerful continent on Earth. How embarrassed we’d all be, trying to explain to them that, well, no, actually…
I’m gonna finish what I had to say in a new post, since this one looks like it’s getting long…
Cause saying all that is a bit easier than getting it done, Rob?
Well, yes, Kim. It’s like the old Monty Python joke about how to play the flute. You blow in this end here, and move your fingers up and down here, and that’s how you play the flute.
But it has to happen one day. Possibly not in our lifetimes.
The mind-set of the Palestinians (and in a way, the Israelis, too) seems to me like the mind of a gambler with badly amateurish instincts: “if I just stay in the game *a little bit longer,* I can make good on my massive losses, and win back the entire pot!” What these people, all of them, need is for the House to cut off their free drinks and their line of credit, and they need to be shown that Caesar’s Palace has doors marked “Exit.” And there’s sunlight outside. (Unfortunately for the Palis, they have a sound historical example that supports them and gives them hope: study the policy of Saladin, who successfully encircled and then destroyed the Crusader states in the exact same region.)
Meanwhile the Israelis are probably dangerously deluded if they think that their state can ever have any meaningful viability in the region, without massive infusions of aid from the US that amount to a kind of artificial life-support. In terms of demographics, the physical region, and the political-religious history, Israel might as well be a moon colony. I don’t think it can go on like this for even the foreseeable future, let alone the historical long-term.
There are multiple (and overlapping) ways of viewing the Palestinian predicament from the Muslim view. A few of the bigger ones are that 1. a stateless people has been wrongly dispossessed of its land; 2. a region with bitter resentment of fairly-recent colonialist abuses now sees the whole scenario through a lens of colonialism, which is a set of problems and perspectives that (I think) the other side has long since abandoned (in other words, on that score they really are talking apples and airplanes to one another); 3. there’s another problem that is largely invisible to Westerners: Muslims view the whole area of Israel/Palestine as ‘waqf,’ that is, lands conquered by Islam which, by their religious law, have been ‘given’ to them by Allah as a haven for all Muslims from now til the Day of Judgement. It’s serious doctrine, and it’s a big hurdle to get over, but serious negotiators will probably have to face it eventually.
It’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe (I could be very wrong) that there are too many *truly* ‘moderate’ Arabs who would accept a ‘2-state-solution’ as a matter of genuine principle (that is, that they believe in their hearts that Israel has a right to exist; in a way, why would they?). I’m betting (and again, I don’t actually know) that in the best case, they’re simply being realistic, given Israel’s military might and its backing by the US; and in the worst case, they may see a 2-state solution as a simple short-term fix, while they begin slowly building the launch-pad for the much-delayed conquest. Consider that Muhammad preached the invasion of Constantinople in his lifetime, and the first attack was launched not long after his death. It took Islam eight centuries to achieve that goal, but achieve it they did.
And what do the Israelis really believe they’re getting? A people that has a long history of persecution as a minority now wishes to be its own majority, thinking that safety lies that way; a people that only barely escaped annihilation has a set of instincts and memories that it’s very hard for outsiders to fully fathom. But the other side is not equipped to try and fathom that, and they don’t seem terribly interested in trying even if they could. So again, I think the entire vocabulary of negotiation may be fatally flawed.
Better jump to a new post…
Yeah, Rob, the joke I liked from the same sketch was, “How to Cure All Known Diseases”:
1. Become a doctor;
2. Discover a cure for all known diseases;
3. Tell everyone about your marvelous discovery, so that there’ll never be diseases any more.
Sound familiar in this context?
Aside from that, I’m gonna give it a rest for now, cuz I think I wrote way too much a few minutes ago…
Very good comment, j_p_z, as always, and I agree with you. The concept of ‘waqf’ is the elephant in the living room, no doubt of it.
The thing is we shouldn’t assume that attitudes are eternally frozen in time. j_p_z’s parallel with Constantinople seems to suggest that they are. In the late 90s things looked much closer to resolution than they are now. Perhaps Arafat lived too long. But other seemingly intractable conflicts – ie Northern Ireland – with as much of a historical legacy of religious and political bitterness – have at least improved greatly. I can’t help thinking George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden both have indirectly had a lot to do with the creation of the current horrendous impasse. I’d go back to what Lefty E said last night about what the actual Arab people he encountered were like – similarly I think anyone who’d been to Israel could paint an optimistic picture of the resilience and spirit of most ordinary Israelis. Power politics and religious zealotry seem to occlude all this, and seeing everything in black and white allows one only to see black ahead.
Not to blow this out of proportion but that para does not show that Hamas or Fatah are committed to Israel’s annihilation in the spirit of the Nazi’s. It shows that ‘there was no agreement between the Palestinians on specifically this phrase’ (recognising the state of Israel.)
It seems to me the only sensible approcah here is one that works against the increasingly likely Showdown in the Middle East scenario. There’s enough parties wilfully misunderstanding each other to the brink of disaster already. I must admit though it dont think it require any misunderstanding to conclude that Hamas are bastards. Bastards with a fingerhold (or 10) on a righteous cause.
Yes, precisely, Michael and the warporn and “they are all evil” approaches hinder any understanding, and provide a very pernicious frame for the reactions of all involved at whatever level.
Look i’m lapsed and all (more correctly broken free and roaming) but isn’t there a Jewish equivalent to Waqf? A serious doctrine in itself?
Oh, Michael (and Kim), Hamas said over and over after they were elected that liberated Palestine extended from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. What do you think that means?
I really wanted to use warporn in that post, Kim, but I couldn’t do it. Don’t know why.
JPZ, This is one of the most useful and least hyperbolic descriptions of the Israeli mindset that I’ve seen for a while. I’m pleased to see that, though taking 2 different paths through this thread, we’ve arrived at the same point – as expressed in Kim’s last post and your second last sentence.
Rob, George Bush I said over and over again “Read my lips, no new taxes”.
The SANP said over and over again “Mandela is a criminal Communist”.
Sinn Fein said over and over again “The Six Counties are part of Ireland”.
They all started off believing these things, but later on they were just campaign rhetoric, and then finally the positions were dropped. It would be a mistake to view any social force (whether it’s the Israeli government – Sharon would have acted differently from Olmert) as both totally united and eternally stuck in one position.
When Hamas was elected, there was some hope they would move in a more moderate direction, and some signs of movement. But the reaction of Israel and the West was not to encourage this, but to cut off funds, which anyone could have told you would have given new life to hardline rhetoric. This is a result of the “no shades of grey” manner of looking at the world that I’m opposed to. If you act in an intransigent way, you shouldn’t be surprised if your opponent – far from becoming pliant – responds with greater intransigence.
I’m sure someone clever could explain this all via game theory, but I think the logic’s not hard to grasp for those prepared to take the blinkers off.
Anyway, on that note, I’m going to bed.
Kim: “…Power politics and religious zealotry seem to occlude all this, and seeing everything in black and white allows one only to see black ahead…”
Certainly, Kim, I agree. I’m not trying to paint things in black and white, simply trying to look under the bed and count how many dust bunnies there are. “Oh, so *that’s* why the room is so stuffy…”
I think that one of the root causes of the spectacularly failed present ‘power politics’ angle has been a lack of genuine honesty on all sides; the players are simply not owning up to what it is they think they want, and/or how they really think they’re actually going to get it. The other problem, again, is that I think everybody in the game believes that they can actually “win!”. If someone were to give them a cold shower and show them what the true costs of their “winning” would be, I think most of them would puke and be unable to face it. There are multiple overlapping dishonesties in play here, not least in the United States, where some very large ones are at work. The reason I’m suggesting a massive dimensional attitude shift, is that I think the players need to be made to understand that in fact there *is* no “game,” and that therefore they can never actually “win”. If they all suddenly, Muslim and Jew alike, became either Buddhists or Christians, this fundamental point would be much easier for them to see.
w/r/t your point about “…we shouldn’t assume that attitudes are eternally frozen in time.”
I’d love to believe you’re right, and in plenty of instances, I’m sure you are. But simply as a thought experiment about that issue, I’d remind you that if attitudes aren’t (or can’t be assumed to be) frozen in time now, then that same human truth would hold, in, oh, the 8th century. Or the 15th. Yet certain things I alluded to did in fact remain quite constant. We certainly shouldn’t assume that human attitudes will always be “frozen,” yet there was a somewhat remarkably sustained consistency about the Islamic attitude towards conquering and humiliating the West for many, many, many centuries –including the taking of Constantinople, and points well beyond.
I’m not trying to paint a black portrait of a monolithic Islamic devourer, I’m just saying not all examples and gambits are always relevant or helpful. (For instance, I think that the N. Ireland situation is simply far too different to ever serve as a useful analogue or model here, except in the broad human sense that the people there seem to finally be simply getting *tired* of killing each other. If that’s what it takes for the ME, well, anything’s better than what we’ve got.) All the same, I certainly would *hope* that you’re right…
Again, I don’t have a direct brief in this (except that I want the horror and the noise to stop, and I don’t want my country to be culpable for terrible things); just counting the dust bunnies…
This chanted outside the Israeli Consulate in SF on 13 July:
Again, what do you think it means?
For my part, i want to make it clear i’m not defending Hamas because I personally like them or because I wish them well in their aims. I’m trying to deal fairly with the information presented here because
1) There is a lot of ordinary palestinian people, who largely because of domestic politics, are sympathetic to and voted for Hamas. When Hamas is caricatured their opinions get lost. And they are often the ones who pay a heavy cost.
2) There is a serious chance of this thing spinning out of control.
And speaking of information presented here, Rob, your link tells us exactly this: On the 4th of May 2006 Mahmoud al-Zahar, addressing foreign ministry officials, made some remarks to the effect that a Palestinian state should usurp the current Israeli state.
What does this mean in practice? I don’t know. Is al Zahar’s word god? (pardon the innacurate pun.) I dont know. And especially in the context of what Kim wrote, I just don’t know. If you do, good for you I only hope you really do. And I only hope Israel and its allies do.
Rob — Huh. I just finished dismissing N. Ireland as a relevant example, but the chant you just posted sounds unmistakably like:
‘Til Ireland shall be free, from the center to the sea.’
I suppose I should also add that Michael Collins is the spiritual godfather of both Irgun-era Begin, and of Mr. Arafat. The Irish never get credit for co-fathering the 20th century, but in a way, that’s what they did. Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., I believe, would not have been possible without Daniel O’Connell. And so on.
Maybe the best thing to do for the ME would be to translate Brendan Behan’s “The Hostage,” “The Quare Fellow,” and “Borstal Boy” into both Arabic and Hebrew. There’s nothing like testimony from a guy who used to live the hard-line himself, til he thought better of it…
Dunno Rob. Probably as difficult to decipher as this sign outside a gas station:
Why do i always get involved in these fact checking games?
From your link Rob:
Steve originally said Hamas. Now we are down to Al-Awda (an american based group) and a bunch of witch-hunting commies (as the bird would say.) And that’s before we even get down to the actual chanters – whose collective identity I couldn’t find. Not to mention that, because of their collective nature, protests are one of the easier things to mis-represent.
I think it means ‘no Israel’, Peter. But then you know that too.
Oh, and then there’s this.
Only one step away from critical mass.
Michael, my point was simply to show that the objective of destroying Israel is embodied in the slogan about freeing Palestine ‘from the river to the sea’, a mantra used by Hamas and, as demonstrated (no pun), by not a few western-based anti-Israeli organisations.
Google the phrase or its variants and you’ll find it is pretty common.
I never said Hamas was incapable of reform. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I was actually fairly optimistic that Hamas would become more pragmatic and reasonable soon after they were elected.
I was wrong. They haven’t budged one millimetre.
The best hope now is that the Palestinian people will make a wiser choice next time they go to the polls and Hamas and its Islamofascist ideology will be discredited.
steve, generally when people enter into debate, it’s considered appropriate and productive to read and take seriously other contributions.
You write:
Kim had already said:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/20/a-lebanese-trigger-iran-war-and-the-neo-cons/#comment-116832
No doubt Hamas, Hezbullah, the IDF, the Knesset, Condi’s minions and anybody left in the EU parliament with a fucking brain are all reading this thread and slapping their foreheads with horrified amazement over what they’ve completely missed viz a viz the ME’s current geopolitical cagefight. (However I bet V. Putin just comes to LP for the Aeon Flux pics)
The place has been a mess for well over three thousand years. I say it’s time to relocate everyone involved to the moon. They’ll all find the landscape strangely familar but the new view of where their sky gods come from should hopefully force a change in perspective. If not, then we can always nuke the circumlunar compost bin as a last resort. Tides? Tides are for wimps.
“When Hamas was elected, there was some hope they would move in a more moderate direction, and some signs of movement. But the reaction of Israel and the West was not to encourage this, but to cut off funds, which anyone could have told you would have given new life to hardline rhetoric. ”
Riiiiiiiiiigggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhttttttttttttt.
So terrorists are terrorists because we don’t give them enough money. And we should fight terrorism by sponsoring terrorists.
You cannot possibly believe what you are saying Kim. In is not hard to see whose side you are on.
Katz:
I wish I could share your optimism, I really do, but having read through newspapers of late-1912~late-1914 some years ago, a feeling of some inevitability in the current situation is understandable. History is not repeating itself but there are alarming enough similarities.
As for the “Battle of the Prams”: that is very real to people – young and old – I spoke with in Britain, Austria and Poland late last year; and it is something that worries Chinese too.
Rob, zero nuance. Its well known that Arafat, and yes now even Hamas, accept, in-principle, a two-state solution. Whats NOT clear is that Israel does.
Things generally fall down on the Palenstinian side over the status of Jerusalem and the illegal Israeli settlements – not the principle. Its not clear that ISrael even supports it in principle – if it results in a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.
The recent phrase “realities on the ground” is one that makes me laugh bitterly. Hebron is 200 hardcore whackjobs on a fortified hill, surrounded by 10,000 Palestinians. Thats a “surreality” on the ground.
Frankly, the problem with the Israeli state, as presently constituted, is that they appear to chant the same “sea to the river” slogans in private.
When even Britain’s starting to go offside, you’ve got to wonder at some of the uncritical ongoing apologia here.
When you say Israel, who do you mean Lefty E?
Rob,
Just out of interest. What actions should we take against the many Israeli’s are against a Palestinian state?
Do you find their views as abhorrant as people who are wanting the extermination of Israel?
Not much discussed is the actual function of Hezbollah.
The movement was a product of the Shia renaissance instigated by the Iranian revolution of 1979.
Understandably, perhaps, the non-Islamic world knows Hezbollah for its resistance to Israeli occupation of South Lebanon in the 1990s. And perhaps they are known for their amalgam of islamist politics and social welfare leadership among Lebanese Shiites.
Syria and probably Iran give Hezbollah money and arms. Their rocketry is a severe irritation to Israel. But no one could seriously argue that they represent a threat to the existence of the state of Israel. So far as Israel is concerned, Hezbollah’s provocations simply serve to unite Israelis behind the Israeli Right.
Perhaps Hezbollah and its sponsors hope to lure Israel into a futile occupation of parts of Lebanon. But having viewed recent Israeli responses it seems that Israel is resisting that temptation. Thus, Hezbollah’s provocative gamble appears not to have paid off. Was this a miscalculation?
One function of Hezbollah that has received scant attention is its role as a missionary for Shia Islam vis a vis other Mulslim sects, notably the Sunni.
So far as Muslims are concerned, international boundaries in the Middle East were drawn up by various imperialist, western, Christian powers. These lines serve no function but to divide and weaken the peoples of the Middle East. And at the moment there is a hot civil war raging between Shiite and Sunni, precipated and perhaps provoked by the US.
Thus it may be worth considering that the activities of Hezbollah against Israel are designed to serve the function of proving to Muslims everywhere that Shia Islam represents the best hope for uniting the Middle Eastern “waqf”.
Al Qaeda claims a similar mission on behalf of Sunni Islam.
Whose interests does it serve to caricature Islamism as monolithic and not to achknowledge these internal divisions?
Rob:
Kim, I’m beginning to despair of this but let me put it this way.
1. Hizbollah militants infiltrate Israel from south Lebanon, kill several soldiers and adbuct two.
2. IDF soldiers pursue them into Lebanon and are killed.
3. Israel regards this act (rightly or wrongly) as an act of war launched from Lebanese territory.
Wrongly is the answer.
Here’s a link from another discussion on the web (ie. at Lenins Tomb)”
THE TWO ISRAELI SOLDIERS WERE CAPTURED IN LEBANON
One quote of many possible selections:
a bird:
So terrorists are terrorists because we don’t give them enough money. And we should fight terrorism by sponsoring terrorists.
It turrists turrists making my roof leak and my dick limp. The root of all evil!
Should we then exterminate the brutes, eh?
Human shields eh…
You mean like the one Israel uses?
From Lenin’s Tomb:
More links to the Israeli web-site at the post.
Or are you talking about that disgusting front-page with the picture of a Lebanese child victim of Israel’s bombing campaign?
One last link for you to mull over while eating lunch. This one from Alexander Cockburn:
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know:
Christo, I posted that Bahrain News Agency item above.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/20/a-lebanese-trigger-iran-war-and-the-neo-cons/#comment-116355
Unfortunately it seems to have been drowned out by the incessant drumbeat of posts that support the Zionist position, including the silly assertion “Israel has the right to defend itself”. What does that mean?
It is more likely that Israel provoked this war. Hezbollah responded to an Israeli incursion by successfully capturing two IDF soldiers and killing six others, but Israel, embarrassed by this propaganda coup by Hezbollah, quickly turned the situation around by claiming that Hezbollah made an incursion onto Israeli land.
In support of this interpretation, I point out that Israel has form on the matter of provocation in the Golan Heights:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_heights
In any case, the land in question is not Israeli land. The international community recognizes that the Golan Heights belongs to Syria, but that it has been annexed by Israel. You wouldn’t know that, because of the barrage of Zionist propaganda the Western media subjects us to.
Israel has the right to defend itself? The Golan Heights is not Israel’s to defend!
I would like to see Israel wiped off the map – not literally by force of arms, but politically, by force of reason, and replaced with a secular state, like Lebanon. The two-state solution is unworkable, as it retains Israel as a Jewish-apartheid regime.
Help is not going to come from the United States, because that country is itself close to being a theocratic state, which favours the status quo of a pseudo-democratic Jewish state in Israel.
Rob addressed your claim Silkworm. Did you address his counterclaim of Hezbollah disinformation? Or has Lenin?
Worth pointing out too, Michael, that contra silkworm above, the Hibollah press release referred to did not mention Israeli soldiers being killed, only the capture of two.
If it were true, how come Hizbollah hasn’t been thumping the tub about it every day since? It would be invaluable ammunition against the morality (or immorality) of the Israeli defence.
It was clumsy disinformation and an attempt to conceal Hizbollah’s incursion, I’d say.
Threadworm:
“The international community recognizes that the Golan Heights belongs to Syria, but that it has been annexed by Israel. You wouldn’t know that, because of the barrage of Zionist propaganda the Western media subjects us to.”
Actually, wormy, Syria launched an unprovoked invasion of Israel that was successfully thwarted. In my opinion Israel has every right to hold on to the Golan Heights as war compensation, a legimate conquest of war and because it serves as a buffer zone that will make it more difficult for Syria to attempt a reinvasion.
The claims also come from the Lebanese police force (that could mean a bunch of things i suppose) Rob, but the links above aint much to hang your hat on. Nor does it (if true) change all that much in my mind.
It would certainly change my mind, Michael. If Israel had in fact been the aggressor party, had systematically lied to the world about what happened, and prosecuted a destructive war on the basis of that lie — well, war crimes wouldn’t be the half of it. I couldn’t possibly support what Israel is doing if that were the case.
Rob, you’re still thinking that if Hezbollah commit an atrocity Israel is justified in committing atrocities and even war crimes.
That’s kindergarten morality IMHO and it’s just not on.
I’m not sure, Brian, that the Hizbollah incursion qualifies as an atrocity. After all, it was targeted at soldiers. What it was was a well-planned military attack across an international border. That makes it an act of war, I think. Israel was entitled to regard it as such and respond accordingly. If they have committed war crimes in executing that response, they should held to account for them. That isn’t an argument against their right to respond, nor for ceasing until they have accomplished their (legitimate) war objectives.
I don’t see how or to what effect the Hizbollah organisation can be held accountable for war crimes it may have committed, since it’s a sub-state actor (albeit a member of the Lebanese government). Since its inception it has carried out around 200 terrorist attacks, killing about 800 victims, including the suicide bombing of the USMC HQ in Beirut in 1983. Is it too late to hold them to account for those? And to whom would they be accountable? Dunno.
Nabakov — your suggestion of lunar relocation of this conflict is certainly appealing, but I fear it is cost-prohibitive. But I think it would be possible to simply seal off the entire region with a layer of insulating foam. Maybe we could leave two holes open: one for oil to come out, and the other for money to go in. Aside from that, what happened inside would not be our business.
Or, and I’m sorry to be flippant but I’m almost half-serious, we could simply transfer Israel to a New Jersey-sized patch of territory in the midst of, say, Wyoming, or elsewhere on US turf. We’re teeming in good real estate, we wouldn’t miss a bit; and the reparations costs to the present residents could be taken out of the massive aid to Egypt, Israel, Jordan etc. that we would no longer be paying. Or maybe we could put Israel in British Columbia, where their engineers would be useful turning Canadian shale-oil into a feasible option, thereby cutting off ME cash supplies forever.
What all these assorted knuckleheads need, is to be silent for a moment and hear this…
“THE ANGEL: I am the angel of reality,
Seen for a moment standing in the door.
I have neither ashen wing nor wear of ore
And live without a tepid aureole
Or stars that follow me, not to attend,
But, of my being and its knowing, part.
I am one of you. And being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.
Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again,
Cleared of its stiff and stubborn man-locked set…”
(Wallace Stevens)
If they won’t hear that, then their future is bound to be full of nothing but this…
“On the underside of the satin leaf,
hot with shade, a scorpion sleeps.
And one Sunday I will be shot brushing
my teeth. I am a native of this land.”
(Frank O’Hara)
We might close it off there as people with dial up etc are having difficulty loading this. A continuation in a general Lebanon post seems to be in order.