| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:08 am Post subject: What Does Israel Want? |
| Opinion/Editorial
What Does Israel Want?
Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5003.shtml
Imagine a group of high ranking generals who simulated for years Third World War scenarios in which they can move huge armies around, employ the most sophisticated weapons in their disposal and enjoy the immunity of a computerized headquarters from which they can direct their war games. Now imagine that they are informed that in fact there is no Third World War and their expertise is needed to calm down some of the nearby slums or deal with soaring crime in deprived townships and impoverished neighborhoods. And then imagine - in the final episode in my chimerical crisis - what happens when they find out how irrelevant have their plans been and how useless are their weapons in the struggle against the street violence produced by social inequality, poverty and years of discrimination in their society. They can either admit failure or decide none the less to use the massive and destructive arsenal at their disposal. We are witnessing today the havoc wreaked by Israeli generals who opted for latter course of action.
I have been teaching in the Israeli universities for 25 years. Several of my students were high ranking officers in the army. I could see their growing frustration since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987. They detested this kind of confrontation, called euphemistically by the gurus of the American discipline of International Relations: ‘low intensity conflict’. It was too low to their taste. They were faced with stones, molotov bottles and primitive arms which required a very limited use of the huge arsenal the army has amassed throughout the years and did not test at all their ability to perform in a battlefield or a war zone. Even when the army used tanks and F-16s, it was a far cry from the war games the officers played in the Israeli Matkal – headquarters – and for which they bought, with American tax payer money – the most sophisticated and updated weaponry existing in the market.
The first Intifada was crushed, but the Palestinians continued to seek ways of ending the occupation. They rose again in 2000, inspired this time by a more religious group of national leaders and activists. But it was still a ‘low intensity conflict’; no more than that. But this is not what the army expected, it was yearning for a ‘real’ war. As Raviv Druker and Offer Shelah, two Israeli journalists with close ties to the IDF, show in a recent book, Boomerang (p. 50), major military exercises before the second Intifada were based on a scenario that envisaged a full-scale war. It was predicted that in the case of another Palestinian uprising, there would be three days of ‘riots’ in the occupied territories that would turn into a head-on confrontation with neighboring Arab states, especially Syria. Such a confrontation, it was argued, was needed to maintain Israel’s power of deterrence and reinforce the generals confidence in their army’s ability to conduct a conventional war.
The frustration was unbearable as the three days in the exercise turned into six years. And yet, the Israeli army’s main vision for the battlefield is today still that of ‘shock and awe’ rather than chasing snipers, suicide bombers and political activists. The ‘low intensity’ war questions the invincibility of the army and erodes its capability to engage in a ‘real’ war. More important than anything else, it does not allow Israel to impose unilaterally its vision over the land of Palestine – a de-Arabized land mostly in Jewish hands. Most of the Arab regimes have been complacent and weak enough to allow the Israelis to pursue their policies, apart from Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon. They have to be neutralized if Israeli unileteralism is to succeed.
After the outbreak of the second Intifada in October 2000, some of the frustration was allowed to evaporate with the use of 1,000 kilo bombs on a Gaza house or during operation Defense Shield in 2002 when the army bulldozered the refugee camp in Jenin. But this too was a far cry from what the strongest army in the Middle East could do. And despite the demonization of the mode of resistance chosen by the Palestinians in the second Intifada – the suicide bomb – you needed only two or three F-16 and a small number of tanks to punish collectively the Palestinians by totally destroying their human, economic and social infrastructure.
I know these generals as well as one could know them. In the last week, they have had a field day. No more random use of one-kilo bombs, battleships, choppers and heavy artillery. The weak and insignificant new minister of defense, Amir Perez, accepted without hesitation the army demand for crushing the Gaza strip and grinding Lebanon to dust. But it may not be enough. It can still deteriorate into a full scale war with the hapless army of Syria and my ex-students may even push by provocative actions towards such an eventuality. And, if you believe what you read in the local press here, it may even escalate into a long distance war with Iran, backed by a supreme American umbrella.
Even the most partial reports in the Israeli press of what was proposed by the army to Ehud Olmert’s government as possible operations in the coming days, indicate clearly what enthuses the Israeli generals these days. Nothing less that a total destruction of Lebanon, Syria and Tehran.
The politicians at the top are more tamed, to a point. They have only partially satisfied the army’s hunger for a ‘high intensity conflict’. But their politics of the day are already donned by military propaganda and rational. This why Zipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister, an otherwise intelligent person, could say genuinely on Israeli TV tonight (13 July 2006) that the best way to retrieve the two captured soldiers ‘is to destroy totally the international airport of Beirut’. Abductors or armies that have two POWs of course immediately go and buy commercial tickets on the next flight from an international airport for the captors and the two soldiers. ‘But they can sneak them with a car’, insisted the interviewers. ‘Oh indeed’ said the Israeli Foreign Minister, ‘This is why we will also destroy all the roads in Lebanon leading outside the country’. This is good news for the army, to destroy airports, set fire to petrol tanks, blow up bridges, damage roads and inflict collateral damage on a civilian population. At least the airforce can show its ‘real’ might and compensate for the frustrating years of the ‘low intensity conflict’ that had sent Israel’s best and fiercest to run after boys and girls in the alleys of Nablus or Hebron. In Gaza the airforce has already dropped five such bombs, where in the last six years it dropped only one.
This may be not enough, though, for the army generals. They already say clearly on TV that ‘we here in Israel should not forget Damascus and Teheran’. Past experiences tell us what they mean by this appeal against our collective amnesia.
The captive soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon have already been deleted from the public agenda here. This is about destroying the Hizballah and Hamas once and for all, not about bringing home the soldiers. In a similar way in the summer of 1982, the Israeli public have totally forgotten the victim that provided the government of Menachem Begin with the excuse of invading Lebanon. He was Shlomo Aragov, Israel’s ambassador to London on whose life an attempt was made by a splinter Palestinian group. The attack on him served Ariel Sharon with the pretext of invading Lebanon and staying there for 18 years.
Alternative routes for the conflict are not even raised in Israel, not even by the Zionist left. No one mentions commonsensical ideas such as an exchange of prisoners or a commencement of a dialogue with the Hamas and other Palestinian groups at least over a long ceasefire to prepare the ground for more meaningful political negotiations in the future. This alternative way forward is already backed by all the Arab countries, but alas only by them. In Washington, Donald Ramsfeld may have lost some of his deputies in the Defense Department, but he is still the Secretary. For him, the total destruction of the Hamas and Hizballah – whatever the price and if it is without loss of American life – will ‘vindicate’ the raison d’ętre for the Third World Theory he propagated early on in 2001. The current crisis for him is a righteous battle against a small axis of evil – away from the quagmire of Iraq and a precursor for the so far unattained goals in the ‘war against terror’ – Syria and Iran. If indeed to a certain extent the Empire was serving the proxy in Iraq, the full fledged support President Bush gave to the recent Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, shows that may be pay off time has come: now the proxy should salvage the entangled Empire.
Hizballah wants back the piece of southern Lebanon Israel still retains. It also wishes to play a major role in Lebanese politics and shows ideological solidarity with both Iran and the Palestinian struggle in general, and the Islamist one, in particular. The three goals do not always complement each other and resulted in a very limited war effort against Israel in the last six years. The total resurrection of tourism on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon testifies that, unlike the Israeli generals, for its own reasons the Hizballah is very happy with a very low intensity conflict. If and when a comprehensive solution for the Palestine question will be achieved even that impulse would die out. Crossing 100 yards into Israel proper is such an action. Retaliating to such a low key operation with a total war and destruction indicates clearly that what matters is the grand design not the pretext.
There is nothing new in this. In 1948, the Palestinians opted for a very low intensity conflict when the UN imposed on them a deal which wrested from their hand half of their homeland and gave it to a community of newcomers and settlers, most of whom arrived after 1945. The Zionist leaders waited for long time for that opportunity and launched an ethnic cleansing operation that expelled half of the land’s native population, destroyed half of its villages and dragged the Arab world into unnecessary conflict with the West, whose powers were already on the way out with the demise of colonialism. The two designs are interconnected: the wider Israel’s military might expands, the easier it is to complete the unfinished business of the 1948: the total de-Arabization of Palestine.
It is not too late to stop the Israeli designs from creating a new and terrible reality on the ground. But the window of opportunity is very narrow and the world needs to take action before it is too late.
Israel set ('A Clean Break') war plan more than a year ago:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/22/israel-set-a-clean-break-war-plan-more-than-a-year-ago.php
We're Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/17/we-re-being-set-up-for-wider-war-in-the-middle-east.php
Israel's attack on Lebanon resulted in 9/11:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/17/israel-s-attack-on-lebanon-resulted-in-9-11.php
Last edited by Alpha on Tue Jul 29, 2008 7:36 am; edited 3 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:15 am Post subject: |
| In 1923, Vladimir Jabotinsky (a founder of Zionism) wrote "The Iron Wall," an essay that laid out a direct comparison of expropriation of the Arabs with the genocide of the indigenous people of North America:
"There can be no discussion of voluntary reconciliation between us and the Arabs, not now, and not in the foreseeable future. All well-meaning people, with the exception of those blind from birth, understood long ago the complete impossibility of arriving at a voluntary agreement with the Arabs of Palestine for the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a country with a Jewish majority. Each of you has some general understanding of the history of colonization. Try to find even one example when the colonization of a country took place with the agreement of the native population. Such an event has never occurred.
"The natives will always struggle obstinately against the colonists - and it is all the same whether they are cultured or uncultured. The comrades in arms of [Hernan] Cortez or [Francisco] Pizarro conducted themselves like brigands. The Redskins fought with uncompromising fervor against both evil and good-hearted colonizers. The natives struggled because any kind of colonization anywhere at anytime is inadmissible to any native people.
"Any native people view their country as their national home, of which they will be complete masters. They will never voluntarily allow a new master. So it is for the Arabs. Compromisers among us try to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked with hidden formulations of our basic goals. I flatly refuse to accept this view of the Palestinian Arabs.
"They have the precise psychology that we have. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux upon his prairie. Each people will struggle against colonizers until the last spark of hope that they can avoid the dangers of conquest and colonization is extinguished. The Palestinians will struggle in this way until there is hardly a spark of hope.
"It matters not what kind of words we use to explain our colonization. Colonization has its own integral and inescapable meaning understood by every Jew and by every Arab. Colonization has only one goal. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible. It has been necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs and the same condition exists now.
"Even an agreement with non-Palestinians represents the same kind of fantasy. In order for Arab nationalists of Baghdad and Mecca and Damascus to agree to pay so serious a price they would have to refuse to maintain the Arab character of Palestine.
"We cannot give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to other Arabs. Therefore, a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the local population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy."
http://www.jabotinsky.org/Jaboworld/docs/Iron%20Wall.doc | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:15 pm Post subject: Israel's Terrorism |
| Israel's Terrorism
by Gabriel Ash
www.dissidentvoice.org
July 18, 2006
The Middle East is boiling over yet again. Israel is resorting to the one strategy it has perfected since the day it was created, murdering civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure.
The Israeli defense doctrine, old as Israel itself, considers bombing of civilian targets a means for pressuring "militants" and uncooperative governments. So Israel bombs bridges and villages in South Lebanon, power plants in Gaza, orchards, fields, schools, hospitals, residential neighborhoods, beach barbecue parties, etc. Everything is a legitimate target. Israeli ministers announce publicly that their chief strategy is to cause civilian suffering. Every day sees its Guernica, and the U.N., which proudly displays a reproduction of the painting, is mum in the face of a hundred Guernicas.
To be clear, Israel's actions fit the very definition of terrorism. Doubly so now, since the bombing campaign is a response to attacks on Israeli soldiers, not civilians. The ever more morally bankrupt "international community" sees nothing, hears nothing, and says nothing. Don't take my word for it. An aide of the Israeli PM said recently: "We are acting there [in Gaza] in an unprecedented manner; we're firing hundreds of artillery shells, attacking from the air, sea and land and the world remains silent."
Having been so encouraged by the world's indifference to the bombing of Gaza, Israel is giving Lebanon the same murderous treatment. Putin and Chirac have managed to assemble some moderate testiness. The rest of the world called for "restraint." When the mission statement is to exact revenge and kill civilians, what's restraint?
According to the EU, Hamas has to renounce violence to become a "responsible government." And Hizbullah has to release the captured soldiers. The Israeli government, on the other hand, although responsible for an unending campaign of terrorism, need not renounce violence, nor release any of its political prisoners. The brotherhood of money and white skin is proving again to be thicker than blood.
Hizbullah's intervention proved again it is the only power that wouldn't stay silent in the face of Israeli barbarism. Since Israel recognizes neither international laws nor international borders, there was nothing morally wrong in Hizbullah's fighters crossing the border into Israel to raid a military patrol. Israel should not enjoy the defense of principles it doesn't respect. With its latest raid, Hizbullah consolidated its position as the leading popular voice in the Middle East, displaying tactical brilliance, solidarity, and a refusal to be bribed or cowered that is putting the rest of the world -- the Arab puppet governments as well as Europe's hypocrites -- to shame. To boot, Hizbullah is also putting to shame other Muslim radicals, most notably the Iraqi thugs and Al-Qaeda, both by successfully raiding legitimate military targets and by feeding a broad popular consensus that cuts across the Sunni-Shia divide.
However, courage and legitimacy aside, it is anybody's guess whether the leadership of Hizbullah foresaw that Israel would go postal and open a full-blown air war against Lebanon, shooting civilians in cars like ducks. If they did not, they were certainly shortsighted, and if they did, they were reckless.
Nevertheless, it is far from clear who wins when the dust settles. While guaranteed to suffer severe damage, Hizbullah still has the odds on its side. When Israel invaded Lebanon for the umpteenth time, government officials announced that Israel's goal was nothing less than the disarming of Hizbullah and the setting of "new rules of the game." That pronouncement sounds awfully reminiscent of Sharon's stated goal for invading Lebanon in 1982, to create "a new order in Lebanon." What are the chances that Olmert will have better success than Sharon? Slim. Hizbullah will nor disarm willfully. Who will disarm it? There are three candidates, and none of them looks too promising.
Israel: Israel can re-occupy Lebanon. That would certainly be a setback to Hizbullah, which would lose men, installations, and freedom of operation. But can Israel destroy Hizbullah? Note that Israel is unable to destroy Hamas, a much weaker organization, on a much smaller territory. No matter how much violence it used, Israel couldn't prevent Hamas from launching rockets and gaining popularity. Will Israel be more successful in Lebanon?
The "International Community": One could see France and the U.S. occupying Lebanon, probably under the guise of some invitation from the Christian minority, or a call for U.N. "peacekeeping" a la Haiti. Assuming Western powers are stupid (or cornered) enough to take the bait, can they achieve in Lebanon what Israel, with a lot more commitment, couldn't? A Western occupation of Lebanon is likely to turn the whole Middle East into one long crusaders vs. Muslims crescent. Does the West have the stomach for that? Does it have a reasonable chance of winning?
The "Cedar Revolution": The most promising alternative, for the West, is to empower some local stooges that would rule the new Lebanon colony for Western and Israeli interests. That is the West's favorite strategy, currently tried in many places around the globe. But Shiites are a poor, radical, bitter and armed majority in Lebanon. It would take more than a few Starbucks customers to subdue them. The anti-Hizbullah coalition is small and weak. Its unity is doubtful and its willingness to fight far from evident. Hizbullah, on the other hand, will have not only well-disciplined cadres and massive popular support, but also the support of Syria and Iran.
Israel could seek to cause as much damage as possible to Hizbullah's infrastructure with aerial assaults, then call it victory. But the blow to Hizbullah would not be enough to put an end to its operations, probably leaving Olmert in the unpleasant position of having to declare impotence. Hence the scenario of a full-blown war is extremely plausible. Such a war will eventually involve an Israeli invasion seeking to severely weakens Hizbullah, followed by an international peacekeeping force that replaces Israel and nurtures a government of Lebanese collaborators. In the rosiest scenario that government eventually gains the ability to repress the majority of the Lebanese population with only Western financial support. At that point the "peacekeepers" withdraw and Lebanon joins the dubious fraternity of Egypt and Jordan, safe Western puppet regimes.
A not-so-slight complication of this classic colonial scenario is the fact that Hizbullah is not an isolated resistance movement; rather it enjoys the international support of Iran and Syria, as well as strong ties with the Iraqi Shia militias, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Furthermore, in the context of a growing resource conflict between the superpowers, Iran could eventually receive covert support from Russia and/or China, in ways reminiscent of the support the Afghani Mujahaddin (and Bin Laden) received from the U.S. Thus, a successful repression of Hizbullah is likely to require at some point dealing a severe blow to Syria and Iran, and such a blow could require a proxy war between the U.S., Russia and China.
To put it differently, the Israel-Hizbullah war can remain contained, or it can end in a decisive manner. But it cannot both remain contained and end in a decisive manner.
(In light of this, one must read skeptically Western editorials calling on Israel to exercise caution, avoid overreaching and limit itself to targeting Hizbullah only are a miserable attempt to defend Israel while keeping up the pretense of opposing the targeting of civilians. The fact is the "collateral damage" is not a result of Israel's failure to "minimize the damage to civilian bystanders." Since Israel can only achieve its aims by widening the scope of the war and forcing other parties to get involved, "damage to civilians" is not a by-product but the core of Israel's strategy of escalation. The longer other parties fail to get involved, the more civilians will die. The New York Times is right that such indiscriminate murder strengthens Hamas and Hizbullah, but the problem is not one that Israel can rectify by changing its tactics. The problem is Israel itself and its true goals.)
The long war scenario, which is the only scenario that has a slightest chance of achieving Israel's goal of disarming Hizbullah, is similar to what the U.S. strategy in Iraq, where success is getting ever more elusive. It is also similar to the original Sharon plan for Lebanon in 1982, which failed. Why would this scenario be more successful in today's Lebanon? Odds are that it won't. But there are good reasons to believe that it will be tried. Three reasons, to be precise:
First, the post-colonial Western imagination is limited. This scenario is the well-understood way of dealing with subject populations in troubled corners of the world. It worked many times in the past, and even if its effectiveness is on a downward curve, there isn't any alternative short of giving up power and compromising.
Second, even if final success is elusive, war buys time, for Israel as well as for the U.S., for the politicians as well as for the interests they represents. For the latter, losing in a decade is still better than compromising today. Raymond Aaron called politics "the art of making things last." That holds true even when what is being made to last is misery.
Third, in international politics it is often true that "it's not the destination that counts, it's the journey." For many Israeli and American interests, war has value, in some cases hard cash value, regardless of final outcome.
One aspect of the intrinsic value of war is that both the leaders and the public in Israel truly believe that all Arabs will surrender if enough force is applied. It never worked. But that racism is too deep to be inconvenienced by facts. The second Lebanon war won't be the first war fought for the sake of maintaining illusions.
Israeli PM Olmert and DM Peretz are both lacking in the most important social capital in Israel, military rank. They therefore need to prove -- to the public was well as to themselves -- that their manhood is the longest in the Middle East; (in Israel this is called "deterrence.") Within the Macho culture Israeli leaders have cultivated for decades, justice and compromise are for sissies. Real men murder civilians. The government has therefore little choice but to escalate the military conflict or risk losing its political credibility.
The Israeli Military, which pushed for the recent escalation in both Gaza and Lebanon, taking advantage of the weakness of the political echelon, itches for war. At stake is repairing the psychological damage than "asymmetric warfare" inflicts on the Israeli military (Ilan Pappe, "What Does Israel Want") But beyond psychology, there are also crucial economic interests. Israel was in the middle of a debate over military expenditures, which the latest budget would cut significantly. The new war will certainly serve as the needed excuse for canceling or otherwise evading the cuts.
Beyond the tangible budget numbers, there is the central position of the army, and the economic interests behind it, within Israeli economy and politics. The stalemate in Gaza and the Hamas's electoral victory are revealing the hollow core of Israel's military dominance, Israel's inability to reduce Palestinians to a hopeless and obedient subject population. Escalation masks this fatal weakness because Israel is undoubtedly the more powerful party. As long as fighting goes on, Israel has the upper hand, its army looks powerful, and above all, useful. The moment the fighting ends, the limits of military power reassert themselves. Continuing military escalation therefore protects the military establishment and Israel's war economy from internal challenges.
Finally, Israel has no hope of a decisive outcome without the U.S. fully backing it against Iran. And while there are many sane voices calling for the U.S. to dissociate itself from Israel and seek a diplomatic compromise with Iran, there are also powerful U.S. interests itching for a global war. The neo-conservative argument is that a global war is necessary for the maintenance of U.S. dominance, not only in the face of rising local challenges such as Iran, but also to curb the rise of China as a global force. (as an aside, I tend to agree that war is necessary to U.S. global dominance. I doubt however that it is also sufficient.) And behind the neo-cons' arguments loom the interests of the U.S. military-industrial-complex. Incidentally, the U.S. economy seems to be moving towards a potentially dangerous recession. While this is still early, there should be no doubt that as the U.S. economy deteriorates, the economic appeal of military conflict will increase.
Given his low poll numbers and public dissatisfaction with Iraq, Bush is probably unable to initiate a war against Iran. The generals are opposed and the GOP is likely to be hammered in the mid-term elections. But if the war is initiated by Israel and the U.S. is perceived to be "dragged" into it unwillingly, Bush and the GOP would benefit again from the popular glow of patriotism that war baths leaders in; Especially given that Democrats will not criticize a war fought "to protect Israel," whose crony capitalists, like Haim Saban, pay for their election campaigns. An Israeli escalation in Lebanon can therefore serve as the necessary trigger for a global conflict that U.S. neo-cons desire.
A larger war will thus serve the short-term interests of the leadership in both Israel and the U.S. It may delay their inevitable decline, but chances are it won't restore their power. Both have reached the double climax of military power and loathsomeness, a point at which they can win any war, but can impose no peace. Since the Islamist leaders of Hamas and Hizbullah tend to take the long view of history, whereas the leaders of the U.S. and Israel are driven mostly by concern for the near future of corporate balance sheets, an escalating conflict might just give both sides the kind of victory they most crave.
One wished that saner voices prevailed; the slide towards war can be stopped by determined international pressure on Israel to accept a ceasefire. That would save many lives, but it will also be a blow to Israeli and U.S. dominance. Therefore, unfortunately, help is definitely not on its way. The people of Lebanon are now being taught a lesson many of them had wanted to forget, that their only defense against their psychopathic southern neighbor is bigger and badder weapons. Rest assured that the lesson will be learned, and that bigger and badder weapons will be used, perhaps against Israel, perhaps half a globe away. Nothing breeds murderers better than silence in the face of murder. Israel's unquenchable bloodlust was forged in the furnaces of the holocaust and galvanized by the silence of the world. Bin Laden said he was inspired to blow the Twin Towers by the sight of Beirut burning in 1982, "and the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond." Who knows whom and to what the latest mayhem will inspire. There is no real justice in this ever-unfolding sickness, but for those who are content with the poetic kind of justice, there is a plenty.
* * * *
Perhaps a liberal rephrasing of Robert Frost can sum up the stakes:
Some say world domination ends in fire, Some say in ice. From knowing Olmert's and Bush's desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if our leaders go for ice, I think they are enough despised, so that for their destruction ice, is also great, and would suffice.
Gabriel Ash is an activist and writer who writes because the pen is sometimes mightier than the sword and sometimes not. He welcomes comments at: g.a.evildoer@gmail.com. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:04 am Post subject: |
| http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12184.htm
Prof. Ilan Pappe on the Israel-Palestine conflict
My name is Ilan Pappe, I am a lecturer at Haifa University, in Israel. I am a long time activist, for peace, human rights, civil rights; basically, an historian who wrote several books on the Arab-Israeli conflict, focusing particularly on the 1948 events and their impact on the current situation.
Q: So why did you decide to become an expert, or study the question of the Palestinians and the formation of Israel?
I realized at the very early stage that the research of history in the cases of people like myself, or as anyone knows in Israel and Palestine, is not just an intellectual pursuit; that the reality, the realities of conflict are informed by what happened in the past. And therefore I thought that not only historians, professional historians, but the society at large should look deeply into the past if it wishes to understand the present better. And I also understood that the way history is taught, being taught and researched in Israeli academia is very loyal to the Zionist ideology, and it was very clear for me, from the early stage in my professional carrier that writing history books, and teaching history courses about the Palestine past, is also a political act, an ideological act, not just an intellectual act.
Ever since then I am still convinced that my way of activism, which connects my professional history of writing, and my political activity in the present, is tightly closed together and I think this is why I still insist also on continuing researching the past, and being active in the present.
Q: When you began to study this, I mean, what conclusions did you come to about, about the state of Israel and the situation of the Palestinians?
I think what came out is something which I think many, many Palestinians before me realized, but for me it took this individual journey into the past to understand that. I was taught as an Israeli academic that there is a very complex story there, and in fact what you find out is that this is a very simple story, a story of dispossession, of colonization, of occupation, of expulsion. And the more I go into it, the clearer the story becomes, even it becomes simpler, and it also brought me to think of the state of Israel, and the Jewish majority in it, in very much the same terms that I used to think about places such as South Africa, and the white supremacy regime there. So I think this is the natural, main conclusion.
Q: The theory of Zionism was that if Jews had their own state that would be a solution to anti-Semitism, and that they will need a state to really defend Jews. What is the reality today?
Well, the reality is first of all that if you create a Jewish state, even if, and I will come back to it in a second, even if a Jewish state is the only solution for anti-Semitism, definitely it cannot be a solution if that state is being built at the expense of a native population. I mean, the fact that in 1948 the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland, dispossessed, did not allow Israel to become a safe place. Or the fact that the Zionists' forefathers decided to create a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab world was also not a good formula to insure security. So the timing and the location of the project of building a Jewish state by itself had the seeds of insecurity. So it could not really solve the problem of anti-Semitism, and as we know, it, in many ways, increased anti-Semitism after the Second World War.
But even more than that, I think that one of the major conclusions of Jews who were not Zionists, after the second world war, was that Jews should take a very active part in building a world where not only anti-Semitism, but basically racism and ideologies of that kind, would not have hold of the peopleâ??s minds and hearts. And I think this is why you saw, after second world war, many Jews trying to be active in movements such as the civil rights movement, in the socialist movement, and so on; exactly motivated by this belief that the right answer to anti-Semitism was not Zionism but rather an international moral movement.
Of course, there are different versions. One can do it from the liberal side, one can do it from the socialist side, but I think basically it is the same idea. However, I think that these alternatives were weakened by the hold Zionism took over the Jewish story, if you want. Or the Jewish representation in the period after the second world war.
Q: How has Zionism, the ideology of Zionism, affected Israel, and how does the Israeli working class see itself, if you want?
There is a parallel, not the right word, I am looking for. The ethnic origin of the working class in Israel is very distinct. Most of the working class peoples in Israel, ever since the creation of the state, are/were either Jews coming from Arab countries, or Palestinians. These were Palestinians who were not expelled in 1948 and became the Arab minority inside Israel. This correspondence between the ethnic origin of people and their class, socio-economic position in society, informs the role in the state no less than the class-consciousness, so to speak.
So, on the one hand, it was easy, relatively easy, to take the Palestinian working class and to enroll them for instance to the Israeli Communist Party, which was the most popular party among the Palestinians in Israel in the 60s and the 70s. On the other hand, a big failure was with the Jews coming from Arab countries, because they will be asked that their only ticket to be integrated into the Jewish society was to be anti-Arab. And they chose nationalism, nationalism rather than socialism, as the best way of improving their position in life. That meant that the socialist left, so to speak, in Israel, was very weakened by the fact that it really only consisted of Arabs and not of any significant numbers of Jews.
Q: What has been the recent struggle that youâ??ve been engaged in at the University -why don't you talk about how that began, and why that happened?
I should being by saying that I think the very important, precondition for any genuine reconciliation in Israel and Palestine is an Israel-Jewish ability to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of 1948. I think the Israelis have a mechanism of denial that educated a whole society to totally obliterate from its memory the terrible crimes that the Jews had committed against the Palestinians in 1948, and even afterwards. I am totally convinced that such an acknowledgement, very much like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, is a precondition for any genuine reconciliation, and therefore my main struggle in the Israeli universities is to allow at least the universities to become a source where people can learn about that denied past.
I encourage students to go and research 1948, and one of these students in his research exposed an unknown massacre in 1948, which was another important brick in the story that we are trying to build. He was a very brave student, most of the students of mine and of others do not dare to write about 1948, and he was disqualified for that. And, I struggled against the university, and because of my struggle against it, and my other political activities, which include the call for boycott and divestment against Israel, the university tried to expel me in May, 2002. And had it not been for the international uproar, they probably would have succeeded, despite the fact that I have a tenured position.
I think this is a bad sign, but it is also a good sign. It is a good sign that there is a feeling in the Israeli academia that if someone tells the truth about what happened in the past, people are not stupid and they are not morally corrupted, and they will do something. And I think the major Israeli struggle is to prevent people like myself to have access to the public, and the main struggle of people like myself is to find alternative ways to get to the people. And for some reasons, which are not always positive, but that is the reality. Israeli Jews, like American Jews, would rather hear it from an Israeli Jew than from a Palestinian. Because what I am saying, the Palestinians have been saying from many years, but for understandable reasons it is much easier for the Israeli public to hear me.
Q: What was the massacre that the student of yours described? And what was the excuse or justification for his disqualification?
Right. The massacre was in the village of Tantura, which is south of Haifa, and the largest massacre in the war. The Israeli army used to occupy the Arab villages in the way that usually left one flank opened so that the people could be expelled through that side. In several cases, like in the case of Tantura, this did not happen. They made a mistake, it was not on purpose, and they closed the village from all four flanks. One of the reasons, on the west the village was on the sea, and the Israeli navy blocked the village. So in situations like these, the Israeli soldiers used to massacre the people rather than cleanse them. And about 230 people, mostly young men and middle-aged men, were massacred and the women and children were expelled to Jordan. That is what he exposed.
Why was he disqualified? The student could not find enough archival evidence, because the Israeli army was trying to hide the events. So he did something, which we call a professional historiography, a oral history. So he went to interview both Jewish soldiers who participated in the massacre, and Palestinian survivors. And both confirmed that the massacre took place. Now, they found six places in his master dissertation where he did not, when they checked his tapes of the interviews, what was said in the tapes did not accurately correspond to what he transcribed. But none of these sections of the interviews made any difference to the overall conclusion. And as we all know, even very experienced professors, if you check them very thoroughly with their sources, there will be some discrepancies between their sources and what happened. And on the basis of that, he was disqualified whereas students and veteran professors, who had many more known mistakes in their works, would never be challenged in such a way.
Q: So that was a pretext?
Oh, yes, definitely that was a pretext. The academic authorities wanted to send a message, and they succeeded, unfortunately. They sent a message to graduate students: donâ??t touch that subject because you are going to hurt your career chances.
Q: So this is a forbidden subject?
Yes, this is a forbidden subject in Israel. Any many of my students, who were in the midst on working on 1948, after this incident, decided to change their subject.
Q: And on what basis did they try to expel you from your position?
Well, they had just a long list of accusations, but if I summarize it, it boils down to three main issues:
One, is my accusation against the university in this affair, where I accused the university of moral corruption, and they said that this was disloyalty to the institute and they found in the context a clause which allows them to expel someone on the basis of that.
Secondly, I taught against their authorization a course on the 1948 Nakba, the catastrophe, the Palestinian catastrophe. That was another reason. And thirdly, my support for the idea of boycotting and sanctioning and divestment against Israel.
They learned in the context that you can bring to court for not being loyal to the state, not only loyal to the institution. So, I think, my trial, my would-be-trial â?? because the trial eventually did not take place - exposed how undemocratic Israel is when it comes to anyone challenging its Zionist character. It is a democracy in the sense that once you are within the Zionist frame of mind, you can really say what you want, and people even will protect your rights to say this. But once you challenge Zionism itself, the democracy ceases to exist and you are being treated as a traitor.
Q: One of your positions is that you are against the idea of a Jewish state, and when you say that you are not within the framework of a Zionism. Is that what you are talking about?
Yes, yes, definitely. Its sort of a bizarre thing, because, as I say, instead of Israel we should have a democratic secular state, this is tantamount to treason in Israel. This is regarded as treason. But on the other hand it is very difficult to take someone within the Israeli context to court and say: â??this guy is dangerous because he is for democracy and secularism.â?? And I think, they have been lying for so many years that the indoctrination was so effective that Jews will never come to that conclusion, and once we are there, they found it very difficult to deal with it.
You know, when a Palestinian says he is for a secular democratic state, they will say â??Yes, and they donâ??t mean it, we know exactly what they
want.â?? But when someone who is a product of the Israeli-Jewish system says it, they are going to check the production line !! How did it happen? Thatâ??s an abberation and I think they are totally bewildered by that.
Q: And what was the response of the media in Israel to your trial, and their efforts to expel you from your position at the university?
Well, unfortunately, the media, especially in the last five years, was not really supportive of any critical approach and itâ??s very tragic that both the media and the academia, which are supposed to be the most critical segments in a secular society, as against religious institutions, cease to play that role.
I remember that they never played it, but definitely in the last five or ten years they are totally conformist and they support the government; very few voices of dissent, and I was only attacked in the media.
Q: You were on national television?
Yes, but I learnt very soon that the only reason I am invited - so I stopped doing it - was to stage a public trial against me. Nobody gave me a chance to speak, they would bring me to a studio to do a kind of a public trial. So I understood it was an ambush and I ceased to go to television studios because it was useless, and they did not allow me to speak.
The encouraging side of the story is the society itself: I got a lot of emails, of letters and phone calls of support from many many Israeli Jews whom I never met before, and even in the town where I live people used to stop and shook my hand. And I have a feeling, because a lot of people are not aware of it, that there is a kind of a terror, and intimidation of the Jews in Israel. They are frightened of saying aloud that they feel because it is such a closed society, that you are nearly ostracized. It is not like America where you can away to some other places, it is a very closed society, and it affects your family, it affects your career if you are doing something, which is easily labeled as treason.
But I think people really felt that I, and others like me, were voicing what they were feeling. For many. many months now, but still they donâ??t dare to say now because the price is too high.
Q: What was the role of the Histadrut, the Israeli trade union, and your own union at the university?
Well, it goes back to the history of socialism and Zionism in Palestine, which we have to be aware of. Socialism, in the case of Zionism, and the Histadrut is the main organization that fuses together, these two ideologies, socialism and Zionism. There was a very limited interpretation of socialism; it was really employing socialism as a means in the hand of a colonialist movement. Socialism was used to at best, at best, to co-opt Arab workers, but more often to expel them from the labor market. This is true about the Mandatory period, between 1918 and 1948, and I donâ??t think anything changed.
The Histadrut as a general trade union is a body, which does not stand to the workers, or to the unions, but to the Zionist ideology. Without Histadrut, it would have been impossible to colonize the Occupied Territories as a labor market. Without Histadrut it would have been impossible to build the labor market in Israel during the years of occupation in such a way that the Palestinians became really slaves, slave workers rather than equal workers. So, as a union of teachers, or academics, on that level it is even worst. I mean, the Histadrut does not at all dare to take any position against the Occupation, against the governmentâ??s policies. It pays lip service to the idea of social equality, and so on. But it does not really do anything. It is a sad story.
Q: How are Palestinian workers, Arab workers, treated in Israel?
Very unfairly, very unfairly. I mean they suffer from two levels of discrimination. Until the 1980s, they constituted a very important part of the unskilled working labor market, and the skilled worker market, but more in the field of construction and services and so on. To put it more simply, one can say they did all these jobs that most Israeli Jews did not want to perform. But they were badly paid compared to Jewish workers, and there was a kind of institutionalized system that discriminated against them on every level of workers rights, from the salary down to the insurance policies, welfare system and everything. The things got worst in the late 1980s, because in the late 1980s there was a big immigration of Russians into Israel, almost one million.
Some of them were pushed into the labor market to replace the Palestinian workers from the jobs that they were allowed to have. So the on one hand, you had a glass ceiling that did not allow the Palestinian workers to go into the more attractive jobs, so to speak, and since the 1980s even these limited jobs were not available and were given by private and public businesses to Russian immigrants.
Q: So the future, within an Israeli state, for the Palestinians, is not bright?
Not at all. In fact, it is even dangerous. Israel controls the life of two groups of Palestinians: there are the Palestinians citizens inside Israel and there are the Palestinians under Occupation. These are very two different groups. I think the group under Occupation is under grave threat, there is still a very serious possibility that this people will be ethnically cleansed, once again, and that mass killing will be performed against it.
Here we are really talking about almost genocide, in the future. Although I donâ??t think this will really happen and I hope that the world will not stand aside. But for the Palestinians in Israel, where this danger is not that imminent, the future means even less rights, social rights, civil rights, human rights, than they have now. They still have limited of these, but it will become worst. The Jewish state will become more ethnic, more racist, more exclusive, and anyone who is not a Jew, or is not regarded as Jew, will suffer from it more in the future than he or she suffers today.
Q: When you began this call for boycott and divestment in Israel, first of all, what kind of support did you get? May be you can talk about England, and the reaction of the government, and the Israeli state?
This I donâ??t want to take the credit for it. I did not start it. I think it is very important for people to understand that large segments of the civil society, in the US and in Europe, for many years now, feel that enough is enough with regard to the Israeli policies in Palestine. And I think many good people were waiting for their governments to do it, because all the time there was the talk of the â??peace process,â?? the diplomatic effort, and they did not want to disrupt it.
But I think people now realize that the diplomatic effort is helping the Occupation, and is not going to bring an end to the Occupation. And with this realization, there was a lot of energy, especially in Europe, especially in Britain, that people wanted to do something. And they are the ones who brought out the idea of boycott, and similar people in America brought up the idea of divestment; because I think they were veterans of the campaign against South Africa, I think that is where the idea emanated. But when we heard about it in Israel, the most progressive left decided to support it. That support gave a lot of impetus, a lot of encouragement to the people abroad to continue, and when the Palestinian society under Occupation voiced its support for this idea as the best strategy, it really burst out.
In England, a very important group of people belonging to the Association of University Teachers, which is called the AUT, a very important trade union, felt â?? I think rightly so- that in the campuses of the universities, because you know, England is very close to Israel. Most of the Israelis are Anglophones, they really like England, academics really like to go to England and we have a very good system that allows people to go abroad. Academic institutes encourage people to go abroad, to expand their academic knowledge. And they felt that all these Israelis were coming to the British campuses, for short terms or long terms. They were the experts on the Arab world; they were experts on thehuman rights and civil rights. I mean the discrepancy between the ideologies they represented, and what they were talking about, was such that it was like having the Israeli embassy taking over the academics in Britain. And they decided, but at least they want to start in England, by an official boycott on anyone who officially represents the Israeli academia.
I donâ??t think they wanted to prevent individual Israelis from coming and talking and dialoguing. I think they were right in pointing to the role of the Israeli academia, as being the main spokespersons, spokesmen for the cause. And they passed a motion for boycott, which was accepted. And the Zionist lobby woke up and put a lot of pressureâ?¦
Q: What did they do?
They hired a very important law firm in England that charged the AUT executive committee with anti-Semitism if they would continue. Of course, I donâ??t think they would have won the case, but you can see the AUT executive committee saying to themselves, it is not worth it, we donâ??t want to go, which is a pity, they should have shown more solidarity. But they were really intimidated by this. There was a proper libel suit, and if you know the English law, it is even more difficult to catch someone in England than it is here in Israel. But nonetheless they were intimidated, and even more that they mobilized all the Jewish historians of the Holocaust, and everything. They equated the AUT decision to a decision of the Holocaust denial. This, of course is very stupid, and so on, but it worked on people.
But I must tell you that the AUT people have not given up, they are preparing a new motion, they are trying a new strategy, they are working from one chapter to the other to convince people and the most interesting thing is that the boycott is working, de facto. I mean, the decision of the AUT to retract angered people so much that most of the British members of the AUT actually thought that they did not care whether an official decision was taken or not, they think that it is the right way forward.
Q: Now, the Zionists in the Israeli state, did they have a history of accusing people who are critical of Zionism, of being anti-Semites, or Jews of being self-hating Jews?
Oh yes, I think there are many many chapters from the very beginning of Zionism, from different sources, Jews criticized the idea; it could be from a settler point of view, it could been from an orthodox point of view. I think one of the most telling chapters of this, is the struggle, in a way the unfortunately unsuccessful struggle of Zionism against the Bund in the Jewish international socialist movement in post second world war Europe. As you know, the Jews who survived the Holocaust were in camps, which were called the displaced persons camps. And, in fact, many of the Jewish survivors liked the idea of both the internationalist approach, as we talked about it before, or even the socialist one.
And the Zionists did not only argue with these people, they used a lot of violence. There is a book by an historian, called Yossi Gussinsky, about this struggle, and in fact what the Zionists did, they recruited young Jews to the Jewish underground, the Haganah, so that these people would not be distracted, and won over by a group of international ideologies, or a group which connected Judaism with an international prospective. And thatâ??s just one historical example, and you know we have the history of more non-Zionist groups inside Israel, they are being isolated, like Maspen, who were spied on by the secret services, and later there was the other group that was imprisoned. Definitely, this is something the Zionists are willing to fight with all the force against.
Q: Did you hear about the role of the AFT, American Federation of Teachers, in opposing this boycott?
Yes, I did, and there was also a role played by all kinds of professional associations in the American academia, like the Political Science Association, and so one. And I was not surprised. I did not really think that anyone in the American trade unions, or labor movements, would follow their British colleagues. I think we need a much more, a lot of groundwork here before this will happen. But it really begs these questions, which I hope, thatâ??s another part of the campaign, which people tend to ignore.
It is not just about stopping money into getting to Israel so that the Occupation can continue. I think it is an educational thing, it is to ask American taxpayers, to ask American workers, to ask American human rights and civil rights activists why the only case in the world where you donâ??t voice a clear position, whereas in any other cases you do, is the case of Israel. What makes it so different, and I think the more we will hear the Jews asking these questions, I hope this will convince them that they had it wrong all these years from excluding Israel from the same criteria in which they would judge other cases in the world.
Q: What has been the role of Israel and Zionism, in relation to imperialism?
Well, I think it starts with colonialism, before imperialism. It is very clear that without the adoption of Zionism as a colonialist project by the British Empire, there would not have been a Jewish settlement in Palestine. Thatâ??s very clear. They needed the British military power, political power in order to start the project, thatâ??s very clear. Without it, it would not have occurred. And then I think that it is fair to say that without serving the American imperialism as a front base, I doubt it whether Israel would have existed or survived. So I think that one of the important lessons the Israelis have still to learn, if they are so closely connected to an empire such as the US, and they are not thinking of any alternative ways of existing within a certain society, or certain area, when the empire will fall, they are likely to fall too. This is something most Israelis do not realize unfortunately.
Q: So the role the US is decisive in keeping Israel?
Oh, yes, absolutely, it is decisive. In any way you look at it, from the financial assistance, not only the grants, but also the loans, from the military assistance, from the diplomatic immunity that America gives Israel at the UN through its veto, voting. And we have seen it in times like the 1973 War, when really the Americans were willing to go to a nuclear war in order to save Israel.
Q: Some supporters of Israel in the US would say it is not fair to compare Israel to the apartheid state of South Africa, and that Israel is a democratic state â?? what is the relationship of apartheid in South Africa to Israel?
I think like many cases in history, there are similarities and dissimilarities. But I think in a general picture, the similarities are more than the dissimilarities. The apartheid in South Africa was a petty apartheid; it had this abusive side to it which included segregation in buses, services and so one, ways of course of dispossession, tortures and so on. This side of the petty apartheid doesnâ??t exist in Israel, there is no segregation on that level. But in many ways, if you include the Occupation inside the apartheid regime in Israel, it is worst than the apartheid in South Africa.
So there are sides to the Israeli apartheid, letâ??s say the external side may seen less threatening and more â??democraticâ??, but the essence of the regime is as bad, if not worst in many ways. And I think the most important thing is the land issue. The basic feature for apartheid in Israel is the issue of land, not allowing Palestinians to have any relations to landownership, land transactions, and so on. Many people donâ??t know that the land in Israel belongs to the Jewish people, and because of that it cannot be sold and transacted with non-Jews.
Q: Is that legal?
Itâ??s legal, it is part of the Israeli constitution in law that 93% of the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. Hence the Palestinians who are 20% of the population have only access to 7% of the land, which is of course where they have also to compete with the money and power of the Jewish private sector. But as far as land, as state-owned land is concerned, the vast majority of it belongs to the state. This is the reason why since 1948 you have hundreds of new Jewish settlements, neighborhoods being constructed and not one new Arab village or neighborhood was built. We are talking about an Arab population that has a natural growth which is three times more than the Jewish one, and yet they are limited into a space in which they are not allowed to expand. That is, I think, the worst side of apartheid in that part of Israel. Of course, the Occupation and the regime of Occupation in the West Bank and in the Gaza strip is definitely worse than an apartheid system.
Q: What is the role of the Jewish National Fundt?
Very important. The Jewish National Fund has a double role. A historical role in 1948 in turning the villages and the lands from which the Palestinians were dispossessed, into a Jewish land. This, the major role of this organization was historically to make sure that every land and house, and asset taken from the Palestinian side, is not moved to the state, but is moved to the Jewish people so to speak, so that it can never be re-Arabized, if you want, again.
Today the JNF plays a different role. In a way it continues to play this role in the West Bank, where it is an active government agency that tries to dispossess Palestinians, and take their land and transfer it to Jews. Inside Israel it is a very vast landowner; every land that is owned by the JNF is a land that only Jews can have. For example, in the Galilee, where the JNF owns land, there are many settlements, and the JNF can force the settlement, and forces the settlement not to accept any Arabs into their settlement under that law. It is a very important tool of colonization, in the past and in the present. And in the present it is a kind of custodian of the Jewish character of the land, which has many implications for Palestinians.
Q: So it enforces the apartheid regime?
I would say it is the main agency of apartheid in Israel.
Q: The US is interested in pushing its economic policies, privatization, free trade zones, in the Middle East, and also in Iraq. What is the role of Israel in pursuing these policies and pushing them in the Middle East?
I think it is a double role. One is that the Israeli chiefs of the economy, about ten years ago, decided to install in Israel a very extreme model of a Reaganite economy. That by itself serves a lot of American interests. But more important, I think, is the fact that Israel is playing through the American intervention either in Iraq, but also in countries such as Egypt and the Gulf states, and so on, a very important role in solidifying the capitalist system of a new Middle East. The reason that Israel can play such an important role in such a future is both because it has succeeded in selling itself to the Americans as an Orientalist country. That is to say a country, which knows the Arabs well. So if you want to have business in the Arab world, youâ??d better have some Israeli advisors, or youâ??d better have your headquarters in Israel because we understand you, and we understand the Arab world. Thatâ??s one way.
The second reason is that the Israeli financial institutes, the high-tech institutes, and so one, are so more advanced in that respect, that they will benefit, and are benefiting already, from that kind of capitalist economy, whereas more traditional economic sectors of the Arab world are going to suffer. It is like taking two societies in a very different economic capacity, and imposing them on this free market ideology, which doesnâ??t give equal opportunities but rather says: we are all starting from the same departure point, but of course we are not equal in our resources and abilities. And in that respect the Israeli economic system has such a big advantage that I am afraid, that given the chances, it can really exploit the situation in such a way that would even alienate Israel further from the Arab world.
Q: Are you familiar with the role of Intel building a plant on Palestinian land?
Yes, I think this is one the reasons that the divestment movement in the US targeted several projects, in order to bring the message home to the American public, that it is not just a genuine American policy that supports the Israeli Occupation, that people are making money out of the Israeli Occupation. Caterpillar was one example with these huge machines that were used for 48 years to destroy houses on the one hand, wipe out villages and construct apartheid wall.
And Intel is another place where, we have to understand, there is very limited space in the Occupied Territories. And when that space is confiscated, for the sake of creating industrial plants, these industrial plants are serving two purposes. One is to employ Palestinian workers in conditions which are much cheaper to the employers, than they would be in Israel, because the Histadrut does not provide them any protection as workers. And the other way is because land is so cheap, and when you have a land like Intel in the Occupied Territories, that means they donâ??t pay any taxes. So the profits are very very high if you move a section of your business into the Occupied Territories. This is just a model for the future, it wonâ??t end there. This is, I think, a very important part of the American direct support for the Occupation.
Q: Is there any opposition in the Jewish working class to Zionism?
Not really, unfortunately. There used to be. When the Communist Party was active and strong, in the 1950s and 1960s, it succeeded in convincing workers that there is a direct link between Zionism and workers interests. However, as I describe the process by which the working class is made up of Jews and non-Jews who still think that their ticket for integration is through nationalism, and not through working-class consciousness, I think that we have to admit that in this sense there is no good news to report.
Q: The supporters of Israel, left supporters of Israel, basically say that the two-state solution is the only real possibility for Israel, and thatâ??s why they push its support in the US. What is your answer to that?
I can see a support for a two-state solution emerging, immediately after the Six-Day war, when Israel did not yet annex the East Jerusalem, did not yet build one Jewish settlement in it. There was a lot of logic of saying that despite, despite the fact that it is only 20% of Palestine could be a basis for a Palestinian state, next to Israel, and that these two states, in the future, would develop in such a way that they might turn it into one state, and even find a way of solving the refugees problem. But this is all water under the bridge.
In 2005, with the number of Jewish settlements, with the Greater Jerusalem becoming one third of the West Bank, and the local, and global, and regional balances of power, I think a two-state solution can only become an indirect way for continuing the Occupation. And as I said before, if we understand that the diplomatic effort has deepened the Occupation, has not brought an end to it, so in the case of the two-state solution we have to liberate ourselves from that paradigm. It can only help the Occupation and the Zionist colonization, and only the beginning of ideas of one-state solution can create a different future there.
Q: The US government has had large numbers of neo-cons, Zionists, Wolfowitzâ?¦First of all, what do you think about that role of these people inside the US government, and the whole situation as far as the US expansion of war in the Middle East?
I think that neo-conservatism is mainly a product of the Cold War, and I think as happened in Israel, so in the US, a lot of people benefit economically, sociologically, politically, from a situation of conflict which begins with the producers of arms, and it ends with the people who have a hold on the decision-making apparatus in the name of national security.
And of course this was all lost in a way when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the cold war ended. And I think this group of people were looking for a new bogey man, a new threat to the national security of the US and they found it because of the very strong influence, I think, of Israel among other things, in the Arab world and the Islamic world. Of course, movements such as the Islamic Al-Qaeda did not help. They provided the pretext, and the context for even pushing these ideas even further. And what we have now is the same people, a next generation, who would do all they can to perpetuate the conflict, because they benefit from the conflict. They benefit from situations of wars, of conflicts, and so on, and I think this is what enforces their hold over the American policy making in the world at large, and in the Middle East in particular.
Of course, in the Middle East, they are aided by another group of people, the Christian Zionists which should not be underrated, where it comes from a more deep fundamental religious ideology, when these forces fused together you have a very aggressive American policy in the Middle East which has all the features of the colonialist policy in the late 19th century, and will end in the same way I think. People will learn that you cannot occupy and colonize for too long.
But it is very disturbing because any American action in the Middle East also complicates the relations between the US and the Muslim world at large, and I think destabilizes the world. And when we talk about destabilization, it means that the human societies do not attend to their crucial problems, but rather deal with problems which are made up by people such as the neo-cons. Problems that would not really exist, I mean there is not really that much of a cultural clash between Muslims and Americans, but it serves very well the neo-cons through political scientists such as Samuel Huntington to say that there is a fundamental clash. We are not talking here about two human societies, but rather of â??aliens and humans.â?? You know, you go to Hollywood, to the American television, and you can see how the cultural production has come, how the cultural production reinforces these images, which serve the capitalist interests of neo-cons and their allies.
Q: Have you been surprised about the media in the US, the way they present the Palestinian situation and the Israeli situation?
Yes, I was surprised because I remember different chapters in the American media coverage of the Middle East in the 50s and the 60s, which I think was better. But what really surprises me was not so much the bias I was prepared for the bias, I was not prepared for the stupidity, I mean for the superfluous. You know, it is almost like an insult to intelligence the way they describe things there. It is not even by taking sides. I would have understood taking sides, like saying this is a situation: we describe it as it is, but we take the Israeli side. I would have been against it, I donâ??t think it is a fair media coverage, but at least it comes from somewhere. But what we have here is a very simple, childish, way of describing this as a kind of a war between the forces of evil and the forces of good. Almost, there is no difference between Star Wars foes in Hollywood and the way the major TV channels here describe the situation there on the ground. That, as I said, is an insult to intelligence.
Q: The majority of Americans were in favor, initially of supporting the war in Iraq. What was the situation in Israel: is there a growing opposition to this invasion?
I think the support in Israel was even stronger than in America. It was quite amazing to read the Israeli press, and to hear Israelis being very enthusiastic before the invasion of Iraq, and after the invasion of Iraq. If you want, one can define the Israeli sentiment as, â??now the Americans will understand that.â?? So donâ??t expect any opposition in Israel to the war in Iraq. There is no opposition whatsoever, there is only support; much more than there is in the US. Of course, I did not talk about the Palestinians in Israel who were totally against the war, or some other Jews. There is an interesting group of Iraqi Jews who signed a petition against the war, showing solidarity to Iraqis for being Iraqis, knowing that the war would kill a lot of Iraqis, but, unfortunately, there was no continuation for that. I was among several dozens of people, we demonstrated against the war, but it is really a pathetic number, it is not very impressive.
Q: Is this economic crisis ,the privatization, the taxes on the Israeli working-class, had any kind of reverberation politically?
Itâ??s surprising how we are all waiting for it to happen. Israelis have the widest gap between the haves and the haves-not index of social and economic inequality in the Western World, so to speak, Israel is number one. You would expect that this would produce some sort of social protest, to be translated, and every now and then it was, like in the time of the Israeli Panthers, the Black Panthers movement, and before that. But every time this is done, the Israeli government is doing one or two things: it creates a situation of war so that these social protests will not mature, and thatâ??s one of the reasons why the Israeli army went into such a harsh response against the second uprising in the Territories, in 2000, because of the relative calm the social protests were sanctioning , especially in the development towns where most of the African Jews live and work, or do not work because the unemployment is very high. And thatâ??s one thing they do.
The second thing they do, they try to employ some kind of election policiesâ?? economics, which give a lot of benefit to people for a very short period before elections to silence down people. But I think it wonâ??t help them in the long run. Twenty-five percent of the Israelis have a very acceptable, even high standard of living, which is a large number compared to many societies in the Third World. And that gives the Israeli political system some sort of stability. But 75% live very close, if not below, what we call in Israel, the poverty line. And this gap eventually will explode. Now, one of the reasons it does not explode, as I said before, is the Israeli ability to create a continuous situation of conflict, so that you are not allowed to deal with your social and economic problems. But I donâ??t think it will hold water for too long.
Q: What is the role of the Labor Party in this coalition government?
There was a good article today in â??Haâ??aretzâ?? by Gideon Levy who, I think rightly, said to people who are voters of the Labor Party, to vote for the worst people they can. There is now an actual competition for leadership. And he said, â??donâ??t vote for anyone who relatively may keep this party aliveâ?? and he gave the names. â??Vote for these people, they are surely going to destroy the party, once and for ever, which is the only chance for building on its ruins a genuine Labor Partyâ??. And this is typical of Levy who always knows how to articulate things better than we all, really summarizes the situation of the Labor party. Itâ??s a shadow party of the Likud, itâ??s a party that believes in capitalism, and a free market model of the worst kind; itâ??s support of the Occupation, it has nothing to offer. Any day that this party is alive prevents any other political, genuine political force of socialism from emerging in Israel as an alternative.
Q: That sounds like the Democratic Party.
Yes. I mean I am not a great expert on America, but yes, thatâ??s my feeling. I watch the Democrats and the Republicans, within a very limited prism as an Israeli, but definitively it is true, and, unfortunately, of some of the social democratic parties in Europe as well.
Thank you.
Last October, when Prof. Ilan Pappe was visiting the SF Bay Area, he was interviewed by Steve Zeltzer for his Labor Video Project cable TV program. This is the audio for the 57 minute program in which Pappe talks about the history of Zionism, the Palestinian Nakba, Israeli-Palestinian labor relations, the need for a one state solution, divestment, and the support of the Israeli public for the Iraq war.
You can download the program by clicking on http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=16276 and scroll down to the bottom right hand corner of the page. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 8:57 am Post subject: The child lies like a rag doll - a symbol of the latest Leba |
| http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14077.htm
The child lies like a rag doll - a symbol of the latest Lebanon war
By Robert Fisk in Beirut
07/20/06 "The Independent" -- -- How soon must we use the words "war crime"? How many children must be scattered in the rubble of Israeli air attacks before we reject the obscene phrase "collateral damage" and start talking about prosecution for crimes against humanity?
The child whose dead body lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest Lebanon war; she was hurled from the vehicle in which she and her family were traveling in southern Lebanon as they fled their village - on Israel's own instructions. Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack, her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child.
The story of her death, however, is well documented. On Saturday, the inhabitants of the tiny border village of Marwaheen were ordered by Israeli troops - apparently using a bullhorn - to leave their homes by 6pm. Marwaheen lies closest to the spot where Hizbollah guerrillas broke through the frontier wire a week ago to capture two Israeli soldiers and kill three others, the attack which provoked this latest cruel war in Lebanon. The villagers obeyed the Israeli orders and initially appealed to local UN troops of the Ghanaian battalion for protection.
But the Ghanaian soldiers, obeying guidelines set down by the UN's headquarters in New York in 1996, refused to permit the Lebanese civilians to enter their base. By terrible irony, the UN's rules had been drawn up after their soldiers gave protection to civilians during an Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon in 1996 in which 106 Lebanese, more than half of them children, were slaughtered when the Israelis shelled the UN compound at Qana, in which they had been given sanctuary.
So the people of Marwaheen set off for the north in a convoy of cars which only minutes later, close to the village of Tel Harfa, were attacked by an Israeli F-16 fighter-bomber. It bombed all the cars and killed at least 20 of the civilians travelling in them, many of them women and children. Twelve people were burnt alive in their vehicles but others, including the child who lies like a rag doll near the charred civilian convoy, whose photograph was taken - at great risk - by an Associated Press photographer, Nasser Nasser, were blown clear of the cars by the blast of the bombs and fell into fields and a valley near the scene of the attack. There has been no apology or _expression of regret from Israel for these deaths.
The innocent continued to die yesterday in Israeli air attacks across Lebanon. Five civilians were killed when an Israeli missile struck a house near the town of Nabatea. Three members of the Hamed family were killed along with their Sri Lankan maid. In the village of Srifa, in the south, Israeli air strikes flattened 15 houses which were homes to at least 23 people but - with no lifting vehicles able to reach that part of the country - there was no way of rescuing anyone alive trapped in the buildings.
The Lebanese civil authorities, however, were able to give names to the dead after an Israeli air raid on the Bekaa Valley village of Nabi Chit; they included Ali Suleiman; Daoud Hazima; Khadija Moussawi and her children Bilal, Talal and Yasmine; Maouffaq Diab; Ahmed and Khairallah Mouawad; Mustafa Jroud and Bushra Shuqr. At least three of the names were female. Another four civilians were killed in an air raid on the village of Loussi in eastern Lebanon.
The Israelis constantly boast of their "pin-point" or "surgical" precision in air attacks. If this is true, then there are far too many civilians being killed in the Lebanese bloodbath to make every one of them an accident. And since Israel's target list now includes obviously civilian targets - deliberately bombed to punish the civilian population - the evidence is mounting that these air raids are intended to kill the innocent as well as the Hizbollah guerrillas whom Israel claims to be fighting.
True, the Hizbollah are killing civilians in Israel, but their missiles are inaccurate and the West, which has done no more than mildly disapprove of Israel's retaliatory onslaught, must surely expect higher standards of the Israeli armed forces than of the men whom both Israel and President George Bush describe as "terrorists".
Why, for example, did the Israelis attack and destroy the headquarters of the Liban-Lait company in the Bekaa Valley, the largest milk factory in Lebanon? Why did they bomb out the factory of the main importer for Proctor and Gamble products in Lebanon, based in Bchmoun? Why did they destroy a paper box factory outside Beirut? And why did Israeli planes attack a convoy of new ambulances being brought into Lebanon from Syria yesterday, vehicles which were the gift of the medical authorities of the United Arab Emirates? The ambulances were clearly marked as a relief aid convoy, according to an Emirates official. Were all these "terrorist" targets? Was the little girl in the field at Tel Harfa a "terrorist" target?
An example of Israel's lack of care in targeting Lebanon came yesterday morning when an Israeli plane fired four missiles into a disused parking lot in the Christian district of Ashrafieh in Beirut. Their targets turned out to be two derelict water drilling lorries which were standing tyre-deep in weeds. Were the tubes on the back of the lorries supposed to be missile launchers? And if so, who imagined that Hizbollah would ever try to conceal such weapons in a Christian area of Beirut where Hizbollah believe many of Israel's own collaborators live.
In Beirut and Nabatea, Lebanese security men claim to have arrested "collaborators" who were "painting" houses and cars with phosphorus to guide in Israeli jets to destroy them. At the same time, the Lebanese Minister of Finance, Jihad Azour, stated that 45 bridges had been destroyed across Lebanon and 60,000 families - 500,000 civilians - have been displaced.
Thousands of foreigners - many of them Lebanese holding dual citizenship - continued to leave the country by bus and ship yesterday, including hundreds of Britons who started the evacuation on Monday in HMS Gloucester. Americans were leaving by sea, although a French security company in Amman - SPO Middle East - was reported to have been hired by the US to evacuate its citizens by bus at a cost of $3,000 (Ł1,700) a head.
They, of course, are the lucky ones, who will finish their journeys in Damascus or Cyprus rather than beside a burnt convoy at Tel Harfa. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:19 pm Post subject: |
| Fox News analyst compares Israelis to Nazis
Bevelacqua tells O'Reilly Jewish state ruthless in Lebanon
WorldNetDaily | July 18, 2006
Fox News military analyst Maj. Bob Bevelacqua, a former Green Beret, appearing tonight on "The O'Reilly Factor," compared Israeli actions in Lebanon and Gaza with Nazi actions in Russia during World War II.
Bevelacqua, a long-time Fox News contributor, said the Israelis were unwilling to compromise in their conflict with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. He denied that the Israelis willingly evacuated from Gaza and Lebanon.
"Saying the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon is like saying the Nazis pulled out of Moscow," he said. "They invaded Lebanon. They invaded Gaza. They take homes and then they give them back. And they expect some type of great recognition."
Bevelacqua acknowledged he had business interests in Lebanon – a company that employed 30 people. His Fox News biography says he works with the WVC3 Group in Reston, Va., an elite security group that provides homeland security services, support and technologies to government and commercial clients.
"They (the Israelis) lack the word compromise," Bevelacqua said. "They refuse to sit down and negotiate."
His resume also says he has a 17-year history of worldwide military experience, including combat in the Gulf War, riot control in Los Angeles, a peacekeeping mission in Haiti, security assistance missions in West African countries and numerous anti-drug missions on the U.S. border with Mexico.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ww3/fox_news_analyst_compares_israelis_to_nazis.htm
Click here: Fox News analyst compares Israelis to Nazis | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 6:46 am Post subject: A Handful of Neocons Are Instigating a Wider War |
| July 20, 2006
A Handful of Neocons Are Instigating a Wider War
Will Americans join Iraqis, Lebanese, and Palestinians as neocon victims?
by Paul Craig Roberts
What explains the indifference of the Bush administration to the slaughter of civilians in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza?
As of the morning of July 19, Israeli bombardments of Lebanese civilian residential districts and public infrastructure have murdered 300 Lebanese, wounded 1,000, and displaced 500,000. The Lebanese prime minister said that Israel's attack has caused "unimaginable losses" and that his government will seek compensation from Israel.
In Gaza, Israel has murdered scores of Palestinian civilians in the past few days.
In Iraq, the civilian daily death toll has risen above 100.
These dead are not Hezbollah militia. They are not Hamas militia. They are not al-Qaeda or Sunni insurgents. They are civilians.
Frustrated by Hezbollah, Israel is lashing out at hapless civilians, knowing that the U.S. will protect Israel from UN Security Council condemnation.
Frustrated by Sunni insurgents, the U.S. has instigated sectarian strife.
Bush has stonewalled the UN, our European allies, and the Lebanese prime minister, all of whom are calling and pleading for Bush to pressure the Israelis to stop their cowardly slaughter from the air of Lebanese civilians.
The Guardianreports that Bush gave Israel the green light to attack Lebanon and has given Olmert another week to pound Lebanon.
U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice has announced that she will go to the Middle East to resolve "the crisis" when it is appropriate. Apparently, the appropriate time is not when people are dying and a country, which had only just recovered from the last Israeli invasion, is again being bombed into rubble.
How many more war crimes must Israel commit before Bush and Condi Rice put aside their indifference?
On July 19, the Israelis turned their air attack on the Christian area of Beirut. The Lebanese Christians can thank the American evangelical Rev. John Hagee, who has thrown his 18,000 member Texas church behind Israeli aggression.
Bush cannot claim public support for his indifference.
As of noon July 19, 800,000 people had participated in CNN's Quick Vote, with the result that 55 percent oppose Israel's attack on Lebanon. This result is despite the fact that U.S. television reporting explains the news from the Israeli perspective.
Similarly, in Israel a survey published by Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth showed 53 percent of Israelis polled said Israel should hold negotiations to secure the release of the Israeli soldier captured in Gaza, while 43 percent backed a military operation.
A poll taken by the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports that 28 percent of Israelis believe Israel should immediately stop bombing Lebanon, compared to 7 percent who believe that the bombing should continue until the captured soldiers are freed, and 14 percent who believe bombing should continue until Lebanon agrees to disarm Hezbollah – a task that Israel's invasion has made more impossible than ever.
If these polls are reliable, one can conclude that the U.S. and Israeli populations are more moral, and more concerned with human life, than are the leaders of the two countries.
Neither can Bush claim that he is supporting Israel because he is Israel's friend. If Bush were Israel's friend, he would not have given a green light to Israel's aggression, which will create more hatred of Israel.
As a number of Israeli writers have pointed out, Israel has shown tooth and claw to its Arab neighbors for decades to no avail.
Writing in Ha'aretz, Yitzhak Laor notes that Israel's problems are not the result of insufficient bombing and destruction of Arab populations. Yet, once again Israeli militants are "enlarging the circle of hostilities, including harming civilians. What Israel's 'strategists' have to offer is the destruction of yet another country."
Laor says the Americans can do this in Iraq with less consequence for themselves, because "the Americans do not intend to live in this region." Israelis cannot afford to show only tooth and claw to their neighbors, because "we do live here."
It sometimes seems Bush goes beyond indifference to contentment with the slaughter of Muslim civilians. Bush has even come across as gleeful as if he is on a dove hunt in a baited Texas field where joy resides in the killing of countless birds.
Many Muslims believe that Bush and Israel see them as animals to be slain. On July 17, neocon John Bolton, Bush's unconfirmed ambassador to the UN, gave credence to this Muslim belief when he announced that Israelis killed by terrorists were more important than the Lebanese civilians killed by Israel. Bolton said that there is no "moral equivalence" between Lebanese civilians killed by Israel and Israeli civilians killed by Muslim terrorists: "It's simply not the same thing to say that it's the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense."
In Bolton's sick mind, Lebanese civilians are not experiencing terrorism when Israel deliberately targets them and drops high explosives on their apartment buildings, streets, bridges, and power plants, and bombs the Beirut International Airport. This, says Bolton, is Israel acting in self-defense.
If Israel grabs Palestinian or Lebanese land and murders civilians, that is "self-defense," but if someone responds to Israeli aggression with a rocket, that is "Muslim terrorism."
The world is sick of this double-standard. Unfortunately, not enough Americans and Israelis are.
Consequently, conflict will continue and escalate. Laor writes that "the director of the American Jewish Committee's Israel/Middle East Office, Eran Lerman, is already recommending going to war against Syria."
And so are the American neoconservatives who control the Bush administration, Washington think tanks, and media positions once held by true American conservatives.
Isolated in their evil, the neoconservatives are frantically and shrilly demanding that Bush join Israel in military attacks on Syria and Iran in order to "build democracy" and to clear the Middle East of any opposition to Israel's unbridled self-interest. The crazed David Horowitz writes that "Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world."
Neoconservatives believe that the U.S. and Israel can extirpate Islam with fire and sword and that the present opportunity to escalate the current conflict into generalized war in the Middle East must not be missed.
Neocon warmongers have stolen the conservative name, the Republican Party, and a portion of the evangelical movement.
Are Americans too inattentive and too brainwashed to prevent their moronic president and his neocon government from initiating a dangerous war?
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:09 am Post subject: Pat Buchanan: No, This Is Not 'Our War' (it's Israel's war) |
| July 21, 2006
No, This Is Not 'Our War'
by Patrick J. Buchanan
My country has been "torn to shreds," said Fouad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, as the death toll among his people passed 300 civilian dead, 1,000 wounded, with half a million homeless.
Israel must pay for the "barbaric destruction," said Siniora.
To the contrary, says columnist Lawrence Kudlow, "Israel is doing the Lord's work."
On American TV, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says the ruination of Lebanon is Hezbollah's doing. But is it Hezbollah that is using U.S.-built F-16s, with precision-guided bombs, and 155-mm artillery pieces to wreak death and devastation on Lebanon?
No, Israel is doing this, with the blessing and without a peep of protest from President Bush. And we wonder why they hate us.
"Today, we are all Israelis!" brayed Ken Mehlman of the Republican National Committee to a gathering of Christians United for Israel.
One wonders if these Christians care about what is happening to our Christian brethren in Lebanon and Gaza, who have had all power cut off by Israeli air strikes, an outlawed form of collective punishment, that has left them with no sanitation, rotting food, impure water, and days without light or electricity in the horrible heat of July.
When summer power outrages occur in America, it means a rising rate of death among our sick and elderly, and women and infants. One can only imagine what a hell it must be today in Gaza City and Beirut.
But all this carnage and destruction has only piqued the blood lust of the hairy-chested warriors at The Weekly Standard. In a signed editorial, "It's Our War," William Kristol calls for America to play her rightful role in this war by "countering this act of aggression by Iran with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?"
"Why wait?" Well, one reason is that the United States has not been attacked. A second is a small thing called the Constitution. Where does George W. Bush get the authority to launch a war on Iran? When did Congress declare war or authorize a war on Iran?
Answer: It never did. But these neoconservatives care no more about the Constitution than they cared about the truth when they lied us into war in Iraq.
"Why wait?" How about thinking of the fate of those 25,000 Americans in Lebanon if we launch an unprovoked war on Iran? How many would wind up dead or hostages of Hezbollah, if Iran gave the order to retaliate for the slaughter of their citizens by U.S. bombs? What would happen to the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, if Shi'ites and Iranian "volunteers" joined forces to exact revenge on our soldiers?
What about America? Richard Armitage, who did four tours in Nam and knows a bit about war, says that, in its ability to attack Western targets, al-Qaeda is the B team, Hezbollah the A Team. If Bush bombs Iran, what prevents Hezbollah from launching retaliatory attacks inside the United States?
None of this is written in defense of Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran.
But none of them has attacked our country, nor has Syria, whom Bush I made an ally in the Gulf War, and to whom the most decorated soldier in Israeli history, Ehud Barak, offered 99 percent of the Golan Heights. If Nixon, Bush I, and Clinton could deal with Hafez al-Assad, a tougher customer than son Bashar, what is the matter with George W. Bush?
The last superpower is impotent in this war because we have allowed Israel to dictate to whom we may and may not talk. Thus, Bush winds up cussing in frustration in St. Petersburg that somebody should tell the Syrians to stop it. Why not pick up the phone, Mr. President?
What is Kristol's moral and legal ground for a war on Iran? It is the "Iranian act of aggression" against Israel, and that Iran is on the road to nuclear weapons, and we can't have that.
But there is no evidence Iran has any tighter control over Hezbollah than we have over Israel, whose response to the capture of two soldiers had all the spontaneity of the Schlieffen Plan. And, again, Hezbollah attacked Israel, not us. And there is no solid proof Iran is in violation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which it has signed but Israel refuses to sign.
If Iran's nuclear program justifies war, why cannot the neocons make that case in the constitutional way, instead of prodding Bush to launch a Pearl Harbor attack? Do they fear they have no credibility left after pushing Bush into this bloody quagmire in Iraq that has cost almost 2,600 dead and 18,000 wounded Americans?
No, Kenny boy, we are not "all Israelis." Some of us still think of ourselves as Americans, first, last, and always. And, no, Mr. Kristol, this is not "our war." It's your war.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=9375
PNAC Neocon Kristol calls for attack on Iran (for Israel, of course!):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/21/pnac-neocon-kristol-calls-for-attack-on-iran-for-israel.php
House overwhelmingly backs Israel in vote:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/21/house-overwhelmingly-backs-israel-in-vote.php | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
