| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:12 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 6:47 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 9:07 am Post subject: 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 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:04 am Post subject: Olmert's Folly? His attacks endanger Israel – and America |
| July 20, 2006
Olmert's Folly?
His attacks endanger Israel – and America
by Brian M. Downing
Israel's recent response to actions by Hamas and Hezbollah has raised alarms in the region to a higher level than in any time since the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Rather than strengthen Israel's security, it might well have weakened it by setting the stage, perhaps irreversibly, for a protracted conflict with various groups in the region. At least one of them has reach well outside the region.
Hamas won recent elections in Palestine owing in large part to the corruption and ineptness of Fatah, the old Palestinian political group once led by Yasser Arafat. So bitter was the hatred between Hamas and Fatah that many observers thought a civil war might break out when the former tried to disarm the latter's security forces. In recent weeks, Gaza-based Hamas forces – a term used loosely here – continued to fire locally-made Qassam rockets into Israel and sortied into Israel to capture an Israeli soldier, precipitating Israeli air strikes on Gaza's power plant and several ground incursions.
The bravura of Hamas' forces, manfully presented in parades and political campaigns, was revealed to be an absurd charade. They scattered and ran like cockroaches alarmed by a kitchen light that Israel switched on. In the eyes of many Palestinians, and their backers in the Arab world, Hamas is disgraced and dishonored. If it does not find effective means of fighting Israel in Gaza and the West Bank, it will be disenfranchised and disbanded.
Competition for voters by Hamas and Fatah will likely take the form of attacks on Israelis. Each will seek to demonstrate its legitimacy and fitness to rule through armed attacks. Their sincerity will be demonstrated not through promises exclaimed on a bullhorn but through killing Israeli soldiers and civilians along Gaza and in the West Bank. (Civilian targets, of course, have long been integral to Palestinian rhetoric and actions.) Though each organization is adequately equipped with weapons and killers, a look through events of the last several years might lead an observer to give the edge to Fatah and its sundry affiliates.
Clearly, Hezbollah is a more formidable entity than either Fatah or Hamas. The mainly Shi'ite organization was created in 1982 following Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon that aimed to establish a defensive glacis. Hezbollah, a complicated organization with political, social, and military structures, mounted a sustained and skillful guerrilla war against the IDF, which over the years inflicted sufficient casualties to cause widespread disaffection and a pullout in 2000.
Angered by events in Gaza or at least seeing an opportunity, Hezbollah fired more Katyusha rockets into northern Israel than in previous months and sortied across the border to capture IDF soldiers. In effect, Hezbollah has opened a second front. Israel has responded with air strikes in Lebanon, including Beirut, which aim to turn the Lebanese populace against Hezbollah– a stratagem that might be based on the dubious hope that political calculus can triumph over vengeful rage. Thus far, IDF forays back into Lebanon have been limited to hot-pursuit sallies.
Hezbollah's answer to Israeli air strikes, as is well known, has been to increase the volleys of Katyushas fired into Israel. Was this a reckless, Sonny Corleone-style response or part of a more clever strategy worthy of his younger brother? Hezbollah's salvoes may lure Israel's new government to order something the IDF likely sees coming – another incursion into and occupation of southern Lebanon, designed to take Israeli towns and settlements out of the range of Katyushas (12.7 miles).
Needless to say, southern Lebanon offers Hezbollah the home field advantage, which it will use to wear down the Israeli army as it did in the '80s and '90s. Knowledge of the terrain and support from the villagers will provide numerous opportunities for snipers, ambushes, and, to import a term more commonly used elsewhere in the region, IEDs. Furthermore, Hezbollah has a presence in many parts of the world from which it can strike at Israeli, Jewish, and American interests. Over the years, it has done so.
A Shi'ite guerrilla campaign in Lebanon might well attract the sympathies and support of co-religionists abroad. Hezbollah's support from Iran, in the form of money and armaments, is well known, though likely overstated for propaganda purposes. Iranian support will undoubtedly continue, perhaps with the reward of more money, arms, and advisers for more sophisticated hardware. Iran, sensing that the U.S. and Israel are over-committed and that world opinion is increasingly disgusted with those two countries, might even send teams of snipers and saboteurs. Alternately, perhaps in conjunction with this, Iran could send such units into Iraq to bolster Shi'ite opposition to the U.S. there.
Iraqi Shi'ites, though certainly engaged in settling accounts with the Sunnis, could enter the equation in several ways. First, they could increase their street battles against the U.S. and the fledgling Iraqi army, which as of late have already been rather sharp. Second, they could send a handful of fighters into southern Lebanon to serve with their Hezbollah brethren. Third, key components could pull out of the already rather shaky coalition government of Nouri al-Maliki. Fourth, they could orchestrate large public demonstrations against the U.S. and Israel. The potential for these to erupt into violence should be obvious. A central figure in all of these scenarios is Moqtada al-Sadr, the young and mercurial cleric who recently said of events in Lebanon: "Let it be known to everybody that we in Iraq will not sit by with folded hands." His Mahdi Army battled the U.S. fiercely two years ago before it was ordered to stop by Ayatollah Sistani. It is battling American troops today in Baghdad, and his party is a key part in the fragile government.
To return attention to southern Lebanon, it is possible that the IDF, remembering all too well the guerrilla war they fought there, unsuccessfully, will not establish a glacis to protect against rocket fire. Instead, it may rely on small reconnaissance teams, aerial observation, and air power to find and destroy launch sites. In this effort, U.S. satellites and AWACs could be of assistance. Such technologies are likely more developed and deadlier than they were in the IDF's previous campaign in southern Lebanon, but they still might not be effective enough to prevent political pressure to completely end rocket attacks on Israel. Only a ground campaign and occupation can do that.
Israel's recent actions have opened the door to a widespread conflict from Gaza, the West Bank, and the Lebanese border. Present efforts to intimidate Syria and implicate Iran could make the conflict even more nettlesome than outlined here. This at a time when most of the world, including a portion of the American public, sees Israel as having overreacted. In time, many Americans may come to see Israel as having inflamed anti-Americanism and endangered American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israel is becoming engaged in a long, costly conflict with Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah, and thousands of heretofore unaggregated Palestinians who may start a third Intifada. A long conflict with those groups, even with only light Israeli casualties and ostensibly favorable kill ratios, will present severe problems for the small state. Higher conscription, extended active duty, and protracted exposure to hostile fire will lead to manpower problems. In a year or so, Israel could face net emigration as young men, especially educated and relatively secular ones, seek to raise their families and pursue their careers in the safety of other countries, confident that they had done their part.
Sober analysts of security matters are coming to see the U.S. war in Iraq as weakening national security. In time, Israel's security could also be generally seen as weakened by its reckless war policy.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/downing.php?articleid=9356 | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:56 pm Post subject: |
| Forwarded:
Excellent article on Israeli attack on Gaza and Lebanon and a review of
recent and not so recent history.
http://www.counterpunch.com/Cockburn07212006.html
A perilous excursion into the distant past, starting seven whole weeks
ago
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
As the tv networks give unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the
message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit
bombardment or armed incursion across its borders without retaliation.
The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should
be
denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to
anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of
an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the
headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of
Hezbollah’s fighters.
Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.
Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June
20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in
an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between
Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed
three Palestinian children and wounded 15.
Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a
van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive
barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.
Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9,
2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians
and
injuring 32.
That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies
of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most
of them women and children.
Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret in the least. Most of the
time it doesn’t even bother to pretend to regret. It says, “We reserve
the right to slaughter Palestinians whenever we want. We reserve the
right to assassinate their leaders, crush their homes, steal their
water, tear out their olive groves, and when they try to resist we call
them terrorists intent on wrecking the ‘peace process’”.
Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes no harm to
the
people of Lebanon, just so long as they’re not supporters of Hezbollah,
or standing anywhere in the neighborhood of a person or a house or a
car
or a truck or a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port
that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot, have
something
to do with Hezbollah. In any of those eventualities all bets are off.
You or your wife or your mother or your baby get fried.
Israel regrets… But no! As noted above, it doesn’t regret in the
least.
Neither does George Bush, nor Condoleezza Rice nor John Bolton who is
the moral savage who brings shame on his country each day that he sits
as America’s ambassador (unconfirmed) at the UN and who has just told
the world that a dead Israel civilian is worth a whole more in terms of
moral outrage than a Lebanese one.
None of them regrets. They say Hezbollah is a cancer in the body of
Lebanon. Sometimes, to kill the cancer, you end up killing the body. Or
bodies. Bodies of babies. Lots of them. Go to the website
fromisraeltolebanon.info and take a look. Then sign the petition on the
site calling on the governments of the world to stop this barbarity.
You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world. You can prove
it too, though this too involves another frightening excursion into
history.
This time we have to go far, almost unimaginably far, back into
history.
Back to 1982, before the dinosaurs, before CNN, before Fox TV, before
O’Reilly and Limbaugh. But not before the neo-cons who at that time had
already crawled from the primal slime and were doing exactly what they
are doing now: advising an American president to give Israel the green
light to “solve its security problems” by destroying Lebanon.
In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut,
was
making ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with
Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a
two-state solution.
Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant -- if UN
resolutions were to be taken seriously -- a Palestinian state right
next
door, with water, and contiguous territory. So Israel decided chase
the
PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters
had
broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern
Israel.
Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well,
because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the
United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border,
invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in
mid-Manhattan
and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year
there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.
With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did,
and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and
bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people,
and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees
in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.
The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from his slumbers
and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop. Sharon gave the White House
the finger by bombing Beirut at the precise times -- 2.42 and 3.38 --
of
two UN resolutions calling for a peaceful settlement on the matter of
Palestine.
When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered down several
miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory, which it illegally occupied,
in defiance of all UN resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal
local
militia and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture center
at
the prison of Al-Khiam.
Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you face
resistance. In Israel’s case it was Hezbollah, and in the end Hezbollah
ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why a lot of Lebanese regard
Hezbollah not as terrorists but as courageous liberators.
The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to destroy all
possibility of a viable two-state solution. It builds illegal
settlements. It chops up Palestine with Jews-only roads. It collars all
the water. It cordons off Jerusalem. It steals even more land by
bisecting Palestinian territory with its “fence”. Anyone trying to
organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.
Sick of their terrible trials, Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders
make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the
old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot
endure. Israel doesn’t want any “peaceful solution” that gives the
Palestinians anything more than a few trashed out acres surrounded with
barbed wire and tanks, between the Israeli settlements whose goons can
murder them pretty much at will.
So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to destroy Lebanon
in
1982, and his heirs are doing it all over again. Since they can’t
endure
the idea of any just settlement for Palestinians, it’s the only thing
they know how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to
the
stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power plant, first
stop
on the journey back to the stone age. Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.
Of course they won’t destroy Hezbollah. Every time they kill another
Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of Israel and support for
Hezbollah. They’ve even unified the parliament in Baghdad, which just
voted unanimously -- Sunnis and Shi’ites and Kurds alike -- to
deplore
Israel’s conduct and to call for a ceasefire.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these little excursions into history, even though
history is dangerous, which is why the US press gives it a wide birth.
But even without the benefit of historical instruction, a majority of
Americans in CNN’s instant poll –- about 55 per cent out of 800,000 as
of midday, July 19 -- don’t like what Israel is up to.
Dislike is one thing, but at least in the short term it doesn’t help
much. Israel’s 1982 attack on Lebanon grew unpopular in the US, after
the first few days. But forcing the US to pressure Israel to settle the
basic problem takes political courage, and virtually no US politician
is
prepared to buck the Israel lobby, however many families in Lebanon and
Gaza may be sacrificed on the altar of such cowardice. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 12:55 am Post subject: |
| Israel set ('A Clean Break') war plan more than a year ago:
Israel set war plan more than a year ago
Strategy was put in motion as Hezbollah began gaining military strength in Lebanon
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/21/MNG2QK396D1.DTL
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Friday, July 21, 2006
(07-21) 04:00 PDT Jerusalem -- Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hezbollah militants is unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago.
In the six years since Israel ended its military occupation of southern Lebanon, it watched warily as Hezbollah built up its military presence in the region. When Hezbollah militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers last week, the Israeli military was ready to react almost instantly.
"Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. "In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board."
More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.
In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.
Israeli officials say their pinpoint commando raids should not be confused with a ground invasion. Nor, they say, do they herald another occupation of southern Lebanon, which Israel maintained from 1982 to 2000 -- in order, it said, to thwart Hezbollah attacks on Israel. Planners anticipated the likelihood of civilian deaths on both sides. Israel says Hezbollah intentionally bases some of its operations in residential areas. And Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has bragged publicly that the group's arsenal included rockets capable of bombing Haifa, as occurred last week.
Like all plans, the one now unfolding also has been shaped by changing circumstances, said Eran Lerman, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence who is now director of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee.
"There are two radical views of how to deal with this challenge, a serious professional debate within the military community over which way to go," said Lerman. "One is the air power school of thought, the other is the land-borne option. They create different dynamics and different timetables. The crucial factor is that the air force concept is very methodical and almost by definition is slower to get results. A ground invasion that sweeps Hezbollah in front of you is quicker, but at a much higher cost in human life and requiring the creation of a presence on the ground."
The advance scenario is now in its second week, and its success or failure is still unfolding. Whether Israel's aerial strikes will be enough to achieve the threefold aim of the campaign -- to remove the Hezbollah military threat; to evict Hezbollah from the border area, allowing the deployment of Lebanese government troops; and to ensure the safe return of the two Israeli soldiers abducted last week -- remains an open question. Israelis are opposed to the thought of reoccupying Lebanon.
"I have the feeling that the end is not clear here. I have no idea how this movie is going to end," said Daniel Ben-Simon, a military analyst for the daily Haaretz newspaper.
Thursday's clashes in southern Lebanon occurred near an outpost abandoned more than six years ago by the retreating Israeli army. The place was identified using satellite photographs of a Hezbollah bunker, but only from the ground was Israel able to discover that it served as the entrance to a previously unknown underground network of caves and bunkers stuffed with missiles aimed at northern Israel, said Israeli army spokesman Miri Regev.
"We knew about the network, but it was fully revealed (Wednesday) by the ground operation of our forces," said Regev. "This is one of the purposes of the pinpoint ground operations -- to locate and try to destroy the terrorist infrastructure from where they can fire at Israeli citizens."
Israeli military officials say as much as 50 percent of Hezbollah's missile capability has been destroyed, mainly by aerial attacks on targets identified from intelligence reports. But missiles continue to be fired at towns and cities across northern Israel.
"We were not surprised that the firing has continued," said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "Hezbollah separated its leadership command-and-control system from its field organization. It created a network of tiny cells in each village that had no operational mission except to wait for the moment when they should activate the Katyusha rocket launchers hidden in local houses, using coordinates programmed long ago to hit Nahariya or Kiryat Shemona, or the kibbutzim and villages."
"From the start of this operation, we have also been active on the ground across the width of Lebanon," said Brig. Gen. Ron Friedman, head of Northern Command headquarters. "These missions are designed to support our current actions. Unfortunately, one of the many missions which we have carried out in recent days met with slightly fiercer resistance."
Israel didn't need sophisticated intelligence to discover the huge buildup of Iranian weapons supplies to Hezbollah by way of Syria, because Hezbollah's patrons boasted about it openly in the pages of the Arabic press. As recently as June 16, less than four weeks before the Hezbollah border raid that sparked the current crisis, the Syrian defense minister publicly announced the extension of existing agreements allowing the passage of trucks shipping Iranian weapons into Lebanon.
But to destroy them, Israel needed to map the location of each missile.
"We need a lot of patience," said Hanegbi. "The (Israeli Defense Forces) action at the moment is incapable of finding the very last Katyusha, or the last rocket launcher primed for use hidden inside a house in some village."
Moshe Marzuk, a former head of the Lebanon desk for Israeli Military Intelligence who now is a researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, said Israel had learned from past conflicts in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza -- as well as the recent U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq -- that a traditional military campaign would be counter-effective.
"A big invasion is not suitable here," said Marzuk. "We are not fighting an army, but guerrillas. It would be a mistake to enter and expose ourselves to fighters who will hide, fire off a missile and run away. If we are to be on the ground at all, we need to use commandos and special forces."
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Since fighting started
-- Israeli air strikes on Lebanon have hit more than 1,255 targets, including 200 rocket-launching sites.
-- Hezbollah launched more than 900 rockets and missiles into northern Israel.
-- At least 330 Lebanese have been killed, including 20 soldiers and three Hezbollah guerrillas. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora says 1,100 have been wounded; the police put the number at 657.
-- 32 Israelis have been killed, among them 17 soldiers, according to Israeli authorities. At least 12 soldiers and 344 civilians have been wounded.
-- Foreign deaths include eight Canadians, two Kuwaiti nationals, one Iraqi, one Sri Lankan and one Jordanian.
Page A - 1
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'A Clean Break' (scroll down to pages 261-269 of from James Bamford's ' A Pretext for War' book at the following URL):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/11/a-clean-break-from-james-bamford-s-a-pretext-for-war.php
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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 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 8:20 am Post subject: Tom Hayden addresses Israel lobby power/influence |
| Tom Hayden: Things Come ’Round in Mideast
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060718_tom_hayden_things_come_round/
Posted on Jul 18, 2006
By Tom Hayden
Editor’s note: In this essay, veteran social activist Tom Hayden, drawing upon his own rude political awakening to the realities of Israeli and Middle East politics during the 1980s, warns that the Israel lobby in the U.S. aims to “roll back the clock” and “change the map” of the region and that its neoconservative supporters will probably try to use the current Middle East crisis to ignite a larger war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
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Twenty-five years ago I stared into the eyes of Michael Berman, chief operative for his congressman-brother, Howard Berman. I was a neophyte running for the California Assembly in a district that the Bermans claimed belonged to them.
“I represent the Israeli defense forces,” Michael said. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. Michael seemed to imagine himself the gatekeeper protecting Los Angeles’ Westside for Israel’s political interests, and those of the famous Berman-Waxman machine. Since Jews represented one-third of the Democratic district’s primary voters, Berman held a balance of power.
All that year I tried to navigate the district’s Jewish politics. The solid historical liberalism of the Westside was a favorable factor, as was the strong support of many Jewish community leaders. But the community was moving in a more conservative direction. Some were infuriated at my sponsorship of Santa Monica’s tough rent control ordinance. Many in the organized community were suspicious of the New Left for becoming Palestinian sympathizers after the Six Day War; they would become today’s neoconservatives.
I had traveled to Israel in a generally supportive capacity, meeting officials from all parties, studying energy projects, befriending peace advocates like the writer Amos Oz. I also met with Palestinians and commented favorably on the works of Edward Said. As a result, a Berman ally prepared an anti-Hayden dossier in an attempt to discredit my candidacy with the Democratic leadership in the California state capital.
This led to the deli lunch with Michael Berman. He and his brother were privately leaning toward an upcoming young prosecutor named Adam Schiff, who later became the congressman from Pasadena. But they calculated that Schiff couldn’t win without name recognition, so they were considering “renting” me the Assembly seat, Berman said. But there was one condition: that I always be a “good friend of Israel.”
This wasn’t a particular problem at the time. Since the 1970s I had favored some sort of two-state solution. I felt close to the local Jewish activists who descended from the labor movement and participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements. I wanted to take up the cause of the aging Holocaust survivors against the global insurance companies that had plundered their assets.
While I believed the Palestinians had a right to self-determination, I didn’t share the animus of some on the American left who questioned Israel’s very legitimacy. I was more inclined toward the politics of Israel’s Peace Now and those Palestinian nationalists and human rights activists who accepted Israel’s pre-1967 borders as a reality to accommodate. I disliked the apocalyptic visions of the Israeli settlers I had met, and thought that even hard-line Palestinians would grudgingly accept a genuine peace initiative.
I can offer my real-life experience to the present discussion about the existence and power of an “Israel lobby.” It is not as monolithic as some argue, but it is far more than just another interest group in a pluralist political world. In recognizing its diversity, distinctions must be drawn between voters and elites, between Reform and Orthodox tendencies, between the less observant and the more observant. During my ultimate 18 years in office, I received most of my Jewish support from the ranks of the liberal and less observant voters. But I also received support from conservative Jews who saw themselves as excluded by a Jewish (and Democratic) establishment.
However, all these rank-and-file constituencies were attuned to the question of Israel, even in local and state elections, and would never vote for a candidate perceived as anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian. I had to be certified “kosher,” not once but over and over again.
The certifiers were the elites, beginning with rabbis and heads of the multiple mainstream Jewish organizations, especially each city’s Jewish Federation. An important vetting role was held as well by the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), a group closely associated with official parties in Israel. When necessary, Israeli ambassadors, counsels general and other officials would intervene with statements declaring someone a “friend of Israel.”
In my case, a key to the “friendship issue” was the Los Angeles-based counsel general Benjamin Navon. Though politics drew us together, our personal friendship was genuine enough. I think that Benny, as he was called, wanted to pull me and my then-wife, Jane Fonda, into a pro-Israel stance, but he himself was an old-school labor/social democrat who personally believed in a negotiated political settlement. We enjoyed personal and intellectual time together, and I still keep on my bookshelf a wooden sculpture by his wife, of an anguished victim of violence.
The de facto Israeli endorsement would be communicated indirectly, in compliance with laws that prohibit foreign interference in an American election. We would be seen and photographed together in public. Benny would make positive public statements that could be quoted in campaign mailings. As a result, I was being declared “kosher” by the ultimate source, the region’s representative of the state of Israel.
Nevertheless, throughout the spring 1982 campaign I was accused of being a left-wing madman allied to terrorism and communism. The national Democratic leader Walter Mondale commented jokingly during a local visit that I was being described as worse than Lenin. It was a wild ride.
I won the hard-fought primary by 51% to 45%. The Bermans stayed neutral. Willie Brown, Richard Alatorre and the rest of the California Democratic establishment were quietly supportive. I easily won the general election in November.
But that summer I made the mistake of my political career. The Israel Defense Forces invaded Lebanon, and Benny Navon wanted Jane and me to be supportive. It happened that I had visited the contested border in the past, witnessed the shelling of civilian Israeli homes, and interviewed Israeli and Lebanese zealots—crazies, I thought, who were preaching preventive war. I opposed cross-border rocket attacks and naively favored a demilitarized zone.
Ever curious, and aware of my district’s politics, I decided we should go to the Middle East—but only as long as the Israeli “incursion,” as it was delicately called, was limited to the 10-kilometer space near the Lebanese border, as a cushion against rocket fire. Benny Navon assured me that the “incursion” was limited, and would be followed by negotiations and a solution. I also made clear our opposition to the use of any fragmentation bombs in the area, and my ultimate political identification with what Israeli Peace Now would say.
There followed a descent into moral ambiguity and realpolitick that still haunts me today. When we arrived at the Israeli-Lebanon border, the game plan promised by Benny Navon had changed utterly. Instead of a localized border conflict, Israel was invading and occupying all of Lebanon—with us in tow. Its purpose was to destroy militarily the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) haven in Lebanon. This had been Gen. Ariel Sharon’s secret plan all along, and I never will know with certainty whether Benny Navon had been deceived along with everyone else.
For the next few weeks, I found myself defending Israel’s “right” to self-defense on its border, only to realize privately how foolish I was becoming. In the meantime, Israel’s invasion was continuing, with ardent Jewish support in America.
Finally, a close friend and political advisor of mine, Ralph Brave, took me for a walk, looked into my eyes and said: “Tom, you can’t do this. You have to stop.” He was right, and I did. In the California Legislature, I went to work on Holocaust survivor issues while withdrawing from the bind of Israeli-Palestinian politics. When the first Palestinian intifada began, I sensed from experience that the balance of forces had changed, and that the Israeli occupation was finished. Frictions developed between me and some of my Israeli and Jewish friends when I suggested that Israel must make a peace deal immediately or accept a worse deal later.
It is still painful and embarrassing to describe these events of nearly 25 years ago, but with Israel today again bombing Lebanon and Israeli officials bragging about “rolling back the clock by twenty years” and reconfiguring the Middle East, I feel obliged to speak out against history repeating.
How do I read today’s news through the lens of the past?
What I fear is that the “Israeli lobby” is working overtime to influence American public opinion on behalf of Israel’s military effort to “roll back the clock” and “change the map” of the region, going far beyond issues like prisoner exchange.
What I fear is that the progress of the American peace movement against the Iraq war will be diverted and undermined, at least for now, by the entry of Israel from the sidelines into the center of the equation.
What I fear is the rehabilitation of the discredited U.S. neoconservative agenda to ignite a larger war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. The neoconservatives’ 1996 “Clean Break” memo advocated that Israel “roll back” Lebanon and destabilize Syria in addition to overthrowing Saddam Hussein. An intellectual dean of the neoconservatives, Bernard Lewis, has long advocated the “Lebanonization” of the Middle East, meaning the disintegration of nation states into “a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties.”
This divide-and-conquer strategy, a brainchild of the region’s British colonizers, is already taking effect in Iraq, where America overthrew a secular state, installed a Shiite majority and its militias in power and now portrays itself as the only protection for Sunnis against those same Shiites. The resulting quagmire has become a justification for American troops to remain.
What I fear is trepidation and confusion among rank-and-file voters and activists, and the paralysis of politicians, especially Democrats, who last week were moving gradually toward setting a deadline for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The politics of the present crisis favor the Republicans and the White House in the short run. How many politicians will favor withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq under present conditions? Isn’t this Karl Rove’s game plan for the November elections?
What I know is that I will not make the same mistake again. I hope that my story deepens the resolve of all those whose feelings are torn, conflicted or confused in the present. It is not being a “friend of Israel” to turn a blind eye to its never-ending occupation.
One might argue, and many Americans today might agree, that Hezbollah and Hamas started this round of war with their provocative kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. Lost in the headlines, however, is the fact that the Israelis have 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, and have negotiated prisoner swaps before. Others will blame the Islamists for incessant rocket attacks on Israel. But the roots of this virulent spiral of vengeance lie in the permanent occupation of Palestinian territories by the overconfident Israelis. As it did in 1982, Israel now admits that the war is not about prisoner exchanges or cease-fires; it is about eradicating Hezbollah and Hamas altogether, if necessary by an escalation against Syria or even Iran. It should be clear by now that the present Israeli government will never accept an independent Palestinian state, but rather harbors a colonial ambition to decide which Palestinian leaders are acceptable.
In 1982, Israel said the same thing about eliminating PLO sanctuaries in Lebanon. It was after that 1982 Israeli invasion that Hezbollah was born. I remember Israeli national security experts even taking credit for fostering Hamas and Islamic fundamentalism as safe, reclusive alternatives to Palestinian secular nationalism. I remember watching Israeli soldiers blow up Palestinian houses and carry out collective punishment because, they told me matter-of-factly, punishment is the only language that Arabs understand. Israelis are inflicting collective punishment on Lebanese civilians for the same reason today.
It is clear that apocalyptic forces, openly green-lighted by President Bush, are gambling on the impossible. They are trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Iraq through escalation in Lebanon and beyond. This is yet another faith-based initiative.
If the American people do not see through the headlines; if the Democrats turn hawkish; if the international community fails to intervene immediately, the peace movement may be sidelined to a prophetic and marginal role for the moment. But we can say the following for now:
Militarism and occupation cannot extinguish the force of Islamic nationalism. Billions in American tax dollars are funding the Israeli troops and bombs.
There needs to be an exit strategy. The absence of any such exit plan is the weakest element of the U.S.-Israeli campaign. Just as the White House says it plans to deploy 50,000 troops on permanent bases in an occupied Iraq, so the Israelis speak of permanently eliminating their enemies, from Gaza to Tehran. The result will be further occupation, resistance and deeper quagmire.
The immediate conflict should not become a pretext for continuing the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. American soldiers should not be stuck waist-deep in a sectarian quagmire. Congressional insistence on denying funds for permanent military bases is a vital first step. Otherwise we will witness a tacit alliance between Israel and the U.S. to dominate the Middle East militarily.
Most important, Americans must not be timid in speaking up, as I was 25 years ago. Silence is consent to occupation. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 7:40 pm Post subject: |
| US Support of Israel brutal oppression/suppression of the Palestinian people PRIMARY MOTIVATION for tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and on 9/11 as well:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/08/05/the-gorilla-in-the-room-is-us-support-for-israel.php
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July 22, 2006
The Shame of Being an American
by Paul Craig Roberts
Gentle reader, do you know that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon? Israel has ordered all the villagers to clear out. Israel then destroys their homes and murders the fleeing villagers. That way there is no one to come back and nothing to which to return, making it easier for Israel to grab the territory, just as Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians.
Do you know that one-third of the Lebanese civilians murdered by Israel's attacks on civilian residential districts are children? That is the report from Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the UN. He says it is impossible for help to reach the wounded and those buried in rubble, because Israeli air strikes have blown up all the bridges and roads. Considering how often (almost always) Israel misses Hezbollah targets and hits civilian ones, one might think that Israeli fire is being guided by US satellites and US military GPS. Don't be surprised at US complicity. Why would the puppet be any less evil than the puppet master?
Of course, you don't know these things, because the US print and TV media do not report them.
Because Bush is so proud of himself, you do know that he has blocked every effort to stop the Israeli slaughter of Lebanese civilians. Bush has told the UN "NO." Bush has told the European Union "NO." Bush has told the pro-American Lebanese prime minister "NO." Twice. Bush is very proud of his firmness. He is enjoying Israel's rampage and wishes he could do the same thing in Iraq.
Does it make you a Proud American that "your" president gave Israel the green light to drop bombs on convoys of villagers fleeing from Israeli shelling, on residential neighborhoods in the capital of Beirut and throughout Lebanon, on hospitals, on power plants, on food production and storage, on ports, on civilian airports, on bridges, on roads, on every piece of infrastructure on which civilized life depends? Are you a Proud American? Or are you an Israeli puppet?
On July 20, "your" House of Representatives voted 410-8 in favor of Israel's massive war crimes in Lebanon. Not content with making every American complicit in war crimes, "your" House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press, also "condemns enemies of the Jewish state."
Who are the "enemies of the Jewish state"?
They are the Palestinians whose land has been stolen by the Jewish state, whose homes and olive groves have been destroyed by the Jewish state, whose children have been shot down in the streets by the Jewish state, whose women have been abused by the Jewish state. They are Palestinians who have been walled off into ghettos, who cannot reach their farm lands or medical care or schools, who cannot drive on roads through Palestine that have been constructed for Israelis only. They are Palestinians whose ancient towns have been invaded by militant Zionist "settlers" under the protection of the Israeli army who beat and persecute the Palestinians and drive them out of their towns. They are Palestinians who cannot allow their children outside their homes because they will be murdered by Israeli "settlers."
The Palestinians who confront Israeli evil are called "terrorists." When Bush forced free elections on Palestine, the people voted for Hamas. Hamas is the organization that has stood up to Israel. This means, of course, that Hamas is evil, anti-Semitic, un-American and terrorist. The US and Israel responded by cutting off all funds to the new government. Democracy is permitted only if it produces the results Bush and Israel want.
Israelis never practice terror. Only those who are in Israel's way are terrorists.
Another enemy of the Jewish state is Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a militia of Shi'ite Muslims created in 1982 when Israel first invaded Lebanon. During this invasion the great moral Jewish state arranged for the murder of refugees in refugee camps. The result of Israel's atrocities was Hezbollah, which fought the Israeli Army, defeated it, and drove it out of Lebanon. Today Hezbollah not only defends southern Lebanon but also provides social services such as orphanages and medical care.
To cut to the chase, the enemies of the Jewish state are any Muslim country not ruled by an American puppet friendly to Israel. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the oil emirates have sided with Israel against their own kind, because they are dependent either on American money or on American protection from their own people. Sooner or later these totally corrupt governments that do not represent the people they rule will be overthrown. It is only a matter of time.
Indeed Bush and Israel may be hastening the process in their frantic effort to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. Both governments have more popular support than Bush has, but the White House Moron doesn't know this. The Moron thinks Syria and Iran will be "cakewalks" like Iraq, where ten proud divisions of the US military are tied down by a few lightly armed insurgents.
If you are still a Proud American, consider that your pride is doing nothing good for Israel or for America.
On July 20 when "your" House of Representatives, following "your" US Senate, passed the resolution in support of Israel's war crimes, the most powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), quickly got out a press release proclaiming "The American people overwhelming support Israel's war on terrorism and understand that we must stand by our closest ally in this time of crisis."
The truth is that Israel created the crisis by invading a country with a pro-American government. The truth is that the American people do not support Israel's war crimes, as the CNN quick poll results make clear and as was made clear by callers into C-Span.
Despite the Israeli spin on news provided by US "reporting," a majority of Americans do not approve of Israeli atrocities against Lebanese civilians. Hezbollah is located in southern Lebanon. If Israel is targeting Hezbollah, why are Israeli bombs falling on northern Lebanon? Why are they falling on Beirut? Why are they falling on civilian airports? On schools and hospitals?
Now we arrive at the main point. When the US Senate and House of Representatives pass resolutions in support of Israeli war crimes and condemn those who resist Israeli aggression, the Senate and House confirm Osama bin Laden's propaganda that America stands with Israel against the Arab and Muslim world.
Indeed, Israel, which has one of the world's largest per capita incomes, is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. Many believe that much of this "aid" comes back to AIPAC, which uses it to elect "our" representatives in Congress.
This perception is no favor to Israel, whose population is declining, as the smart ones have seen the writing on the wall and have been leaving. Israel is surrounded by hundreds of millions of Muslims who are being turned into enemies of Israel by Israel's actions and inhumane policies.
The hope in the Muslim world has always been that the United States would intervene in behalf of compromise and make Israel realize that Israel cannot steal Palestine and turn every Palestinian into a refugee.
This has been the hope of the Arab world. This is the reason our puppets have not been overthrown. This hope is the reason America still had some prestige in the Arab world.
The House of Representatives resolution, bought and paid for by AIPAC money, is the final nail in the coffin of American prestige in the Middle East. It shows that America is, indeed, Israel's puppet, just as Osama bin Laden says, and as a majority of Muslims believe.
With hope and diplomacy dead, henceforth America and Israel have only tooth and claw. The vaunted Israeli army could not defeat a rag tag militia in southern Lebanon. The vaunted US military cannot defeat a rag tag, lightly armed insurgency drawn from a minority of the population in Iraq, insurgents, moreover, who are mainly engaged in civil war against the Shi'ite majority.
What will the US and its puppet master do? Both are too full of hubris and paranoia to admit their terrible mistakes. Israel and the US will either destroy from the air the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iran so that civilized life becomes impossible for Muslims, or the US and Israel will use nuclear weapons to intimidate Muslims into acquiescence to Israel's desires.
Muslim genocide in one form or another is the professed goal of the neoconservatives who have total control over the Bush administration. Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz has called for World War IV (in neocon thinking WW III was the Cold War) to overthrow Islam in the Middle East, deracinate the Islamic religion and turn it into a formalized, secular ritual.
Rumsfeld's neocon Pentagon has drafted new US war doctrine that permits pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear states.
Neocon David Horowitz says that by slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, "Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world," thus equating war criminals with civilized men.
Neocon Larry Kudlow says that "Israel is doing the Lord's work" by murdering Lebanese, a claim that should give pause to Israel's Christian evangelical supporters. Where does the Lord Jesus say, "go forth and murder your neighbors so that you may steal their lands"?
The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts
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July 22, 2006
Disaster in the Making
by Charley Reese
You can observe three important things simultaneously in the Middle East: One, Israel's total disregard for the lives and property of the Arab people; two, the effectiveness of the Israeli propaganda machine; and three, the utterly craven support for Israel by the U.S. government.
A fourth thing, if you can stand to watch television news, is how casually the talking faces dispense falsehoods because of their ignorance, which is understandable. Middle East history is too complex for a fly-in TV star to avoid the trap of failing to separate fact from propaganda.
Hezbollah, for example, raided an Israeli military outpost on what Hezbollah considers the Lebanese side of the border. Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers. It did not fire any rockets at Israel as several television people have said – mimicking, of course, Israeli propaganda.
Instead of sending a special-forces team or setting up negotiations for a prisoner exchange, Israel launched an all-out attack, knocking out bridges, roads, airports and fuel facilities, and doing enormous damage to civilians. Only then did Hezbollah respond with rockets, as it certainly had a right to do. Israeli journalists have pointed out that Israel has been planning for years to destroy Hezbollah and is using the raid as an excuse.
The Israelis did the same thing in Gaza. When a handful of militants kidnapped one soldier, what did the Israelis do? They destroyed the power plant, bridges and all the government facilities in Gaza. Once again, they are using the kidnapping as an excuse to do what they had planned to do anyway – destroy Hamas and the ability of the Palestinian people to govern themselves. It takes an enormous amount of chutzpah to destroy the Palestinian government and then demand that it control the militants. "With what?" American reporters ought to be asking the Israelis.
By the way, the Israelis never ended their occupation of Gaza. They forced settlers to withdraw because it was too much trouble to guard them. But they retained control of Gaza. Nobody can go in or out without Israeli permission. The airport is closed. They cut off the tax money that is paid by Palestinians and rightfully should have gone to the Palestinian Authority. In other words, they turned Gaza, already one of the most densely populated areas in the world, into a Middle East version of the Warsaw Ghetto. And they regularly bombed it or sprayed it with artillery.
Yet, so effective is Israeli propaganda and so ineffective is American news coverage, Israel is once again playing the poor victim. Gee, the Israelis tell the American media, we hate to destroy Lebanon – even as their planes and artillery continue to do just that – but we can't stand living under a rain of terrorist rockets.
Well, obviously, they have not been. Hezbollah only fires its Katyusha rockets (a short-range, unguided missile with a 50-pound conventional warhead) in response to Israel's violation of Lebanon's borders, which it routinely does with its fighter planes. Even now, what Hezbollah is firing can hardly be called a "rain." It's more like a scattered shower. As for the "thousands" of rockets Hezbollah allegedly has, that number comes from the Israeli government. It may or may not be accurate.
Like President Bush, the Israelis offer no evidence. Bush, who revealed himself inadvertently in St. Petersburg, Russia, as the arrogant, foul-mouthed slob he is, blames Syria and Iran for Hezbollah but offers no evidence whatsoever. If Hezbollah had thousands of rockets, you'd think it wouldn't be so sparing in the use of them.
One reason Lebanon never disarmed Hezbollah is because its members are considered heroes by the Lebanese Shi'ites. They were the ones who made Israel's occupation of Lebanon so costly that the Israeli people demanded that it be ended. They also provide a wide range of welfare services to the Lebanese people, and they are not terrorists. The largest terrorist organization in the Middle East is the state of Israel, which kills civilians by the hundreds.
What you are witnessing is a disaster in the making – not only for Lebanon, which will require 50 years to recover, but for the United States, which stands exposed once again as a prejudiced hypocrite and an accessory to Israel's war crimes.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=9385
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July 21, 2006
America Held Hostage
It's day 10 – and Israel is still threatening the lives of 25,000 Americans in Lebanon
by Justin Raimondo
The Israelis are dropping leaflets, as well as bombs, over Beirut. Aside from warnings to stay away from Hezbollah facilities, this little missive stands out:
"We all know from the experience of the past few days the massive strength of Israel and its readiness to use this power against the terrorist elements.
"The saying goes: those who sleep in graveyards have nightmares."
With all of Lebanon becoming one big killing field, the Israelis should be the last ones talking about graveyards and who sleeps in them. As of Wednesday, "at least 300 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, and including 29 Israelis, had died in the fighting." One thousand Lebanese wounded, and half a million refugees.
What's interesting about this screed, however, is the preening, bullying tone. Note the "massive power" trope and the taunting reminder that the assault has only gone on for a "few days" – the clear implication being that it could go on much longer. Wednesday the story was that the Bush administration would give the Israelis a week to degrade Hezbollah's military capability, and then they'd send Condi in to patch things up.
Thursday morning, however, as the bird sings outside my window, I awake to the news that the IDF is insisting on two weeks. In two weeks, they'll be saying a month more – and the Americans will start to get antsy. The Arab killer regimes that back the bashing of Hezbollah are fidgeting nervously as pictures of the slaughter are beamed around the world: the Egyptians, for one, are reportedly furious that Bush refuses to endorse calls for a cease-fire. Any other American president would have long ago made such a pronouncement and fulfilled America's mediating role, in line with our status as the predominant power in the region.
But not this president. This is all about Israel, and not the U.S., as the dominating power in the Middle East. Bush's indifference to American interests and craven appeasement of the Israelis has led him to stand helplessly by as Israeli fighter jets paid for by American taxpayers drop U.S.-made ordnance on American citizens. There are 25,000 U.S. nationals in Lebanon, for all intents and purposes held hostage by the IDF. Instead of taking the Israelis to task for putting Americans at risk – without warning, and without apology – George W. Bush gave them the green light to keep up the bombing and the blockade for as long as they can get away with it.
The scandal over the reimbursement demanded by the State Department for rescuing U.S. citizens trapped in Lebanon will pale as Americans realize why it took so long to even begin the difficult task of getting our people out of there safely. Garance Franke-Ruta reports the outrageous truth on the American Prospect's weblog:
"A reliable source tells me that the reason the United States has been so slow in evacuating its citizens from Lebanon is that the public diplomacy (i.e., P.R.) issues raised by evacuating under Israeli assault are so complicated. Individuals within the State Department, I am told, have been reluctant to create an impression that the Israeli assault on Lebanon is as bad as it is or that civilian U.S. citizens are being threatened by U.S. ally Israel. If a conflict this severe had broken out in, say, Indonesia, the American embassy would have been shut down the next day and its personnel and families rapidly brought to safety. That's how things normally work. (See Laura Rozen on the evacuation from Albania here.) In this case, however, the diplomatic message sent by shutting down the U.S. embassy in the face of Israeli bombing would have contradicted the U.S. government message of support for the Israeli mission against Hezbollah terrorists, which, when added to the general concern within lower-level diplomatic circles about ever creating a Fall of Saigon-style visual for the news media, have led the Americans to be slower than they could have been about getting U.S. citizens out of harm's way."
In my last column, I likened the slowness of the American response to the federal government's hapless efforts to deal with the effects of Hurricane Katrina, a comparison made by many others. However, the Lebanese disaster is much worse than what happened in New Orleans and environs. This isn't incompetence: the U.S. government made a conscious decision to delay the rescue mission to avoid embarrassing the Israelis. The Bush administration can always be counted on to put Israel first – ahead even of the welfare and very lives of American citizens.
When it comes to kowtowing before the Israel lobby, however, Congress outdoes the executive branch by several degrees of servility. Pat Buchanan was exactly right when he described Congress as "Israeli-occupied territory." A resolution giving unconditional support to Israel passed the Senate unanimously: and, in the House, a similar measure passed overwhelmingly. Not that everyone who voted for it is proud of his or her vote: in the negotiations leading to the introduction of the resolution by the Republicans, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pledged to vote for the resolution and speak on its behalf, but refused to be a co-sponsor. Or, as Roll Call put it, she refused to "attach her name to it." Does she really imagine this kind of obfuscation is going to provide adequate cover on her left flank? The antiwar faction of her party, large and growing, is already on to her brand of warmongering, and she knows it. In any case, it takes a special kind of cowardice to slither around the issue with such snake-like alacrity.
The Democrats are competing with the GOP to see who can praise the Israeli blitzkrieg in the most obsequiously extravagant terms. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid made a fire-breathing speech in favor the resolution, Hillary Clinton declared her "unreserved support" for the invasion, and even Russ Feingold, ostensibly the antiwar candidate among the Democratic presidential wannabes, averred:
"I stand firmly with the people of Israel and their government as they defend themselves against these outrageous attacks. What we have done by becoming mired in Iraq, and by deciding to change the balance of power in that region, is enable Iran and Syria to be much more open in tormenting Israel, the United States, and our allies."
That is gibberish. The "defense" of Israel hardly requires the bombing of northern Lebanon, including the Christian areas and the civilianinfrastructure. The Israelis are even hitting the barracks of the Lebanese army – the very army the Israelis are demanding must police southern Lebanon and prevent Hezbollah attacks. Israel's goal has nothing to do with getting any soldiers back: it's all about the dissolution of a Parliament where Hezbollah's representatives sit, and the division of the country. Forget the "Cedar Revolution" – touted by Bush and the neocons as indisputable evidence of a "democratic wave" supposedly sweeping the region as the direct result of Iraq's "liberation." The Israelis have decided that the government brought to power in the "Beirut spring" must fall, and that is the end of that.
As for Syria, it has never been weaker, which is precisely why the Israelis are now engineering a provocation. It is also hard to believe the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops nearby emboldens either Syria or Iran to "torment" anybody, except, perhaps, their own people.
If anyone is being tormented, it is the Syrians, who have bent over backwards to cooperate with the Americans in the war on al-Qaeda and assiduously tried to avoid any conflict with Washington. To no avail: Israel's enemies are our enemies. President Assad was recently given a sign of things to come when Israeli jets buzzed his summer palace. The Iranians, too, have signaled their willingness to negotiate, yet the U.S. is openly embarking on a campaign to fund a Chalabi-like "democratic" opposition, consisting of monarchists, Communist cultists, and job-seekers.
Baghdad – Beirut – Damascus – Tehran: get on board the "regime change" train and fasten your seat belt. Because it doesn't matter how sick unto death the American public is of the neocons' wars. They will get one after the other anyway, in rapid succession. This is due to the unprecedented power of "the Lobby" – as Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt term it in their now-famous Harvard University study of Israel's fifth column in the U.S.
This is Israel's war, for the moment, but already the outline of a scheme to drag us in is taking shape, with calls for an "international force" to supplant the Israeli invaders, to be stationed in a buffer zone on the Lebanese-Israeli border. Not a UN force, however, but a "multinational" one, presumably made up mostly of Americans, Brits, and probably the French. It's possible they could recruit from among the motley crew of Sunni Arab autocrats who have turned on their Lebanese "brothers" and left them to twist slowly in the wind: the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Jordanians, who have all joined Israel in assigning the blame for this war on Hezbollah.
This would gather all the elements of a broad anti-Shia alliance in one place, and lay the foundations for future action – in Syria, perhaps, where a confrontation is looming, and ultimately in Iran, the real target of the regime-changers.
The narrative of this war is being carefully articulated: it is, we are told, a "proxy war" being waged by Hezbollah, which the conspiracy theorists insist is merely an Iranian instrument. According to this view, Hassan Nasrallah is merely Mahmoud Ahmadinejad writ small.
To begin with, Hezbollah is a nationalist organization, with the requisite Islamist veneer. It was created not by Iran but by the Israelis themselves, in 1982, when they foolishly invaded the first time – and provoked a reaction that eventually drove the IDF out of southern Lebanon. This fantasy that Hezbollah consists of remote-controlled robots operated by the mullahs of Tehran is convenient for the purposes of war propaganda, but the reality is a bit more complex.
Yet even if we accept the simplistic Israeli-neocon view of Hezbollah as merely Iranian-run automatons, their proposed course of action still fails to make much sense. The logic of the neocon argument, applied to Iraq, would require us to turn our guns on the very government we are pledged to defend against the insurgency. The principal elements of Iraq's democratically elected Shi'ite coalition –including the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Badr Corps (SCIRI's militia), and the Da'wa party – were funded by Tehran and given sanctuary on Iranian soil during the years of Ba'athist rule. Are they, too, cat's-paws of Tehran?
Most Americans don't want U.S. troops to return to Lebanon – perhaps they remember what happened the last time. If the question is put as Israel versus Hezbollah, then, according to this CNN poll, 57 percent are more sympathetic to Israel, while 20 percent disdain taking sides and 4 percent are pro-Hezbollah. One suspects, however, if asked to choose between Israel and Lebanon, quite a different result would be forthcoming. In any event, 47 percent disapprove of the way President Bush is handling the crisis, with 43 percent approving – and 31 percent saying Israel's military response to the kidnapping of its soldiers went too far. As pictures of the devastation wrought by the IDF capture the brutal reality of Israel's exercise in "self-defense," this number is bound to go higher.
Yet the momentum of the burgeoning conflict may sideline public opinion and give impetus to the War Party's ambitious plans. As the rescue mission got belatedly underway, and American troops set foot on Lebanese soil for the first time since the ill-fated 1980s incursion, the chances of the U.S. getting roped into this snake-pit were quadrupled. Those Marines will be a magnet for every nutball "militia" and provocateur – a tripwire just waiting to be triggered.
Which leads us to wonder if this, perhaps, wasn't built into the calculations that went into the making of this war.
No one believes the official pretext for the invasion – the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah – and it is well-known that plans for the operation were ready to be taken off the shelf well before the incident. On Meet the Press the other day, Tim Russert asked NBC's Martin Fletcher if the Israelis had been looking for an opportunity to attack Hezbollah and took the first one that came along. Fletcher's answer was illuminating:
"I think so very strongly. I mean, they've never – they'll never say that publicly, but don't forget that when Israel left – ended their occupation of south Lebanon in the year 2000, the deal was that the Lebanese army would go in and police the border. Well, they never did that. Instead, Hezbollah moved in with all those rockets, and ever since then, about – for that last five years, Israel's been planning what to do, how to fight Hezbollah, how to destroy them. So this is, this is not a quick reaction to a kidnapping, it's the implementation of a plan Israel's been working on for five years with very specific targets. They call it a work plan. They're going step by step."
Step 1 – Seize a pretext, any pretext, to goose-step into Lebanon.
Step 2 – Simultaneously denounce Syrian influence and a hidden "spy network" supposedly still remaining in Lebanon – this in spite of the recent bust-up of a Mossad cell by Lebanese intelligence, which had been responsible for several assassinations.
Step 3 – Restart the Lebanese civil war – and drag Syria into it.
Step 4 – Engage the enemy on two fronts:
A. Diplomatically, in the United Nations, by imposing sanctions on Iran and demanding inspections of its nuclear facilities. This long drawn-out ritual is meant largely for American and European consumption – to convince world opinion that every possible avenue for a peaceful settlement has been explored, before the second front is opened up.
B. Militarily, in Lebanon, and beyond. Bashar al-Assad is a pincer movement away from being deposed. A right hook from U.S.-occupied Iraq and a left from the Israelis would knock out the last remaining Ba'athists and open up a veritable Pandora's box of ethnic and religious conflicts long masked by the dictatorship of the Assads.
Step 5 – On to Tehran!
The hijacking of American foreign policy by a small but influential cadre of neoconservatives is no secret, nor is it a deep mystery that they have the president's ear. Whether the sound of their whispered advice will drown out the plaintive cries of ordinary Americans, who are hardly in the mood for yet another "cakewalk," is not yet known. In the case of George W. Bush, however, it is always best to count on him living up to one's worst expectations.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I am really excited by the Antiwar.com student essay contest: Antiwar.com is always looking to cultivate aspiring journalists and others who see themselves as activists, and an essay contest, I believe, is an ideal way to do it. This is the time for antiwar writers to find their voice and take advantage of the very large audience we can offer for their work. And there are cash prizes! Go here for details.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9371
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July 22, 2006
Alive and Still Kicking Hard: Washington's Neocons
by Ehsan Ahrari
Until the second term of George W. Bush is over, the neoconservatives would do their best to kick up a storm of criticism and controversy every time the United States decides to give diplomacy a chance. However, as long as Vice President Dick Cheney is mentoring Bush on issues of foreign policy, the neocons have nothing to worry about. Even with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the helm of the State Department, Cheney is still largely making America’s foreign policy. The neocons know that, but they still prefer to make enough noise for the continuation of the "cowboy diplomacy."
Two items of the past weekend deserve attention regarding the capabilities of the neocons to push the Bush administration in a particular direction. The issue of debate was Israel’s "war" with Hezbollah. The advocates of what they call "proactive diplomacy" (which might be a euphemism for "cowboy diplomacy") were former Speaker Newt Gingrich and the editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol.
Gingrich, appearing on the Sunday program, Meet the Press, said,
"We’re in the early stages of what I would describe as the third World War and, frankly, our bureaucracy’s not responding fast enough and we don’t have the right attitude. And this is the 58th year of the war to destroy Israel and, frankly, the Israelis have every right to insist that every single missile leave south Lebanon, and the United States ought to be helping the Lebanese government have the strength to eliminate Hezbollah as a military force – not as a political force in the parliament – but as a military force in south Lebanon."
In the resolutely phrase-making environment of Washington, D.C., it seems that the neocons are running out of scary phraseology. The use of the phrase "Third World War" sounds like a desperate attempt to add a few decibels to a rhetoric that lacks substance. Alternately, they might be running out of ideas to imminently revive the ostensibly natural instinct of the Bush administration to be unilateralist.
Bill Kristol is also on a similar crusade. While Gingrich is busy phrasemaking and insisting that Israel has every right to cleanse Southern Lebanon from the presence of Hezbollah, Kristol has simplistically defined the "problem" related to Iran and his version of a "solution" to it. He writes:
"No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria (a secular government that has its own reasons for needing Iranian help and for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas), little state sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah. And no Shi'ite Iranian revolution, far less of an impetus for the Saudis to finance the export of the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam as a competitor to Khomeini's claim for leadership of militant Islam – and thus no Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and perhaps no Hamas either."
While it is hard to find a clear evidence of Iran’s "ordering" or "instructing" Hezbollah to start the crisis with Israel, it is reasonable to expect that such a linkage exists. It is also possible that Hezbollah did not anticipate the severity of Israeli response to its kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers. On these issues whatever intelligence Hezbollah had at its disposal failed it miserably.
Israel got tired of hearing that its decision of May 2000 to pull out of southern Lebanon was a "victory" of Hezbollah’s guerrilla war. A general suggestion has been that the Palestinian militant groups also adopted guerrilla war tactics to extract political concessions from the Jewish state. So, it is possible that Israel was looking for opportunity to reassert its instinct of disproportionate reaction to put Hezbollah in its proper place.
It is also possible that Hezbollah’s timing of actions against Israel might have some connections with the fact that the United States is seriously bogged down in Iraq, and the Taliban is making a comeback in Afghanistan.
No matter what motivated Hezbollah, the imminent necessity for the United States is to intervene in the crisis diplomatically, instead of telling the Israelis to go ahead and punish Lebanon, but make sure that the civilian losses ("collateral damage" in the heartless language used by the military all over the world) are minimal.
Needless to say, by taking that explicit position, the Bush administration has established a vindictive precedent. The "crime" of the Lebanese government is that it is weak and cannot control Hezbollah. The "offense" of the Lebanese is that they are the citizens of a weak state. However, new rules are being established in crisis control, as Lebanon is being bombed into backwardness.
Still the neocons are not satisfied. Not that they are cheering over the destruction of Lebanon; however, they are so focused in their cold-blooded advocacy of military action against Iran that they are not supporting with the same zealotry that the bombing of Lebanese infrastructure should be stopped as urgently as the firing of Hezbollah’s rockets on the innocent civilian Israeli population.
Regarding Iran and Syria, Kristol writes, "For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them." That is a fictitious proposition in terms of its linkage. Iran and Syria might be enemies of Israel; however, no categorical fact-based observation can be made that they are enemies of the United States. Indeed, it can be argued that both those countries seek a rapprochement with the lone superpower for different reasons.
Since "radical Islamism" is at "war" with the United States, in Kristol’s judgment, the "right response is renewed strength – in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran." He adds, "For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?"
There is little doubt that President Bush has opted to give diplomacy a chance in the case of North Korea and Iran. However, there is little reason to expect that such a course of action would be pursued for a long time, especially involving Iran. In the case of North Korea, Kim Jong Il seems to have reestablished the import of nuclear deterrence, even though there have been suggestions that it lost its primacy under the new untamed vagaries of the post-9/11 era.
The alleged presence of nuclear weapons in North Korea creates sufficient ambiguities in Washington about the rationality of using military strikes against that country. The presence of certainty that Iran does not have nuclear weapons emboldens the neocons to advocate a military strike against it. The neocons are saying what a whole lot of US government officials might be thinking.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/ahrari.php?articleid=9382 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:19 am Post subject: |
| Take a look at what Fisk wrote about the Arab/Muslim world hating US for allowing/enabling the Israel Zionazi Luftwaffe to bomb Lebanon with such resulting in the next 9/11, 7/7, etc.:
A gripping diary of one week in the life and death of Beirut
By Robert Fisk
07/23/06 "The Independent" -- --
Sunday 16 July
It is the first time I have actually seen a missile in this war. They fly too fast - or you are too busy trying to run away to look for them - but this morning, Abed and I actually see one pierce the smoke above us. "Habibi (my friend)!" he cries, and I start screaming "Turn the car round, turn it round" and we drive away for our lives from the southern suburbs. As we turn the corner there is a shattering explosion and a mountain of grey smoke blossoming from the road we have just left. What happened to the men and women we saw running for their lives from that Israeli rocket? We do not know. In air raids, all you see is the few square yards around you. You get out and you survive and that is enough.
I go home to my apartment on the Corniche and find that the electricity is cut. Soon, no doubt, the water will be cut. But I sit on my balcony and reflect that I am not crammed into a filthy hotel in Kandahar or Basra but living in my own home and waking each morning in my own bed. Power cuts and fear and the lack of petrol now that Israel is bombing gas stations mean that the canyon of traffic which honks and roars outside my home until two in the morning has gone. When I wake in the night, I hear the birds and the wash of the Mediterranean and the gentle brushing of palm leaves.
I went to buy groceries this evening. There is no more milk but plenty of water and bread and cheese and fish. When Abed pulls up to let me out of the car, the man in the 4x4 behind us puts his hand permanently on the horn, and when I get out of Abed's car, he mouths the words "Kess uchtak" at me. "Fuck your sister." It is the first time I have been cursed in this war. The Lebanese do not normally swear at foreigners. They are a polite people. I hold my hand out, palm down and twist it palm upwards in the Lebanese manner, meaning "what's the problem?". But he drives away. Anyway, I don't have a sister.
Monday 17 July
The phones are still working and my mobile chirrups like a budgerigar. Too many of the calls are from friends who want to know if they should flee Beirut or flee Lebanon or from Lebanese who are outside Lebanon and want to know if they should return. I can hear the bombs rumbling across Hizbollah's area of the southern suburbs but I cannot answer these questions. If I advise friends to stay and they are killed, I am responsible. If I tell them to leave and they are killed in their cars, I am responsible. If I tell them to come back and they die, I am responsible. So I tell them how dangerous Lebanon has become and tell them it is their decision. But I feel great sorrow for them. Many have been refugees four times in 24 years. Today I am called by a Lebanese woman with Lebanese and Iranian citizenship and one child with a US passport and another with only a Lebanese passport. Her situation is hopeless. I suggest she travels to the Christian mountains around Faraya and try to find a chalet. It will be safe there. I hope.
I come back from Kfar Chim where part of an Israeli missile or an aircraft wing has just partially decapitated the driver of a car. He looked so tragic, his head lolling forward in the driver's seat, just looking at all the blood splashing down his body on to the floor. Abed was getting spooked because I spent too long at the scene. The Israelis always come back. "Habibi, you took too long. Never stay that long again!" He is right. The Israelis did come back and bombed the Lebanese army.
Now my housemaid Fidele is spooked. She thinks it is too dangerous to travel from the Christian district of Beirut to my home since the Israelis blew the top off the local lighthouse 400 metres from my front door. Fidele is from Togo and makes fantastic pizzas (I recommend her Pizza Togolaisi to anyone) so I send Abed off to pick up her up and bring her to my home for one hour. She puts my dirty clothes in the washing machine, and after five minutes the power goes off and we have to take them all out and try again tomorrow.
Tuesday 18 July
At 3.45am, I wake to the sound of tank tracks and a big military motor heaving away in the darkness. I go downstairs to find that the Lebanese army has positioned an American-made armoured personnel carrier in the car park opposite my home. It has been placed strategically under some palm trees, as if this will stop Israeli aircraft from spotting it. I don't like this at all and nor does my landlord, Mustafa, who lives downstairs. The Lebanese army is now an occasional target for the Israelis and this little behemoth looks like a palm tree disguised as a tank. Later in the morning, I call a general in the army who is a friend of mine and army operations calls me back to check the location. It takes an hour before they find the car park on their maps. Then I receive another call telling me that the APC is next to my home to prevent the Hizbollah from using the car park to launch another missile at an Israeli ship. The empty American Community School is just up my road. The Lebanese army is defending us.
The first French warship arrives to pick up French citizens fleeing Lebanon. It steams proudly past my balcony. Many French naval vessels are named after great military leaders, and this particular anti-submarine frigate is called the Jean-de-Vienne. I pad off to consult my little library of French history books. Jean de Vienne, it turns out, was a 14th-century French admiral who raided the Sussex town of Rye and the Isle of Wight and who was killed - oh lordy, lordy - fighting in the Crusades against the Muslim Turks. A suitable ship to start France's evacuation of the ancient Crusader port of Beirut.
Wednesday 19 July
Now that the Israelis are destroying whole apartment blocks in the Shia southern suburbs - there is a permanent umbrella of smoke over the seafront, stretching far out into the Mediterranean - tens of thousands of Shia Muslims have come to seek sanctuary in the undamaged part of Beirut, in the parks and schools and beside the sea. They walk back and forth outside my home, the women in chadors, their bearded husbands and brothers silently looking at the sea, their children playing happily around the palm trees. They speak to me with anger about Israel but choose not to discuss the depth of cynicism of the Shia Hizbollah who provoked Israel's brutality by capturing two of its soldiers. As well as the Hizbollah, the Israelis are now targeting food factories and trucks and buses - not to mention 46 bridges - and the bin men are now reluctant to pick up the rubbish skips each night for fear their innocent rubbish truck is mistaken for a missile launcher. So no rubbish collection this morning.
The local Beirut papers are filled with photographs that would never be seen in the pages of a British paper: of decapitated babies and women with no legs or arms or of old men in bits. Israel's air raids are promiscuous and - when you see the results as we now do with our own eyes - obscene. No doubt Hizbollah's equally innocent civilian victims in Israel look like this but the slaughter in Lebanon is on an infinitely more terrible scale. The Lebanese look at these pictures and see them on television - as does the rest of the Arab world - and I wonder how many of them are provoked to think of another 9/11 or 7/7 or whatever the next date will be.
What does war do to people? Later, I am talking to an Austrian journalist and idly ask what her father does. "He drinks," she says. Why? "Because his father was killed at Stalingrad."
I walk across with tea for the soldiers on the APC in the car park. They are all from Baalbek, Shia Muslims. They would never open fire on a Hizbollah missile crew. Then I return home from another visit to the southern suburbs and find they have gone, along with their behemoth. The first good news of the day.
The minister of finance holds a press conference to talk of the billions of dollars of damage being done to Lebanon by Israel's air raids. "We have had pledges of aid from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar," he proudly announces. "And from Syria and Iran?" the man from Irish radio asks, naming Hizbollah's two principal supporters in the Muslim world. "Nothing," the minister replies dismissively.
Thursday 20 July
A bad day for messages. Phone calls from the States to tell me I am an anti-Semite for criticising Israel. Here we go again. To call decent folk anti-Semites is soon going to make anti-Semitism respectable, I tell the callers before asking them to tell the Israeli air force to stop killing civilians. Then a fax from a Jewish friend in California to tell me that a man called Lee Kaplan - "a columnist for the Israel National News", whatever that is - has condemned me in print for developing a "high-paid speaking career among anti-Semites". Unlike Benjamin Netanyahu and many others I can think of, I never take money for lecturing - ever - but to smear the thousands of ordinary Americans who listen to me as anti-Semites is outrageous.
Another fax from the editor of the forthcoming paperback edition of my book, apologising for bothering me at a "very difficult (sic) time" but promising to send me page proofs by DHL which is still operating to Beirut. I go downtown to check this with DHL. Yes, the man says, parcels for Lebanon are sent to Jordan and then in a truck via Damascus to Beirut. A truck, I say to myself. Ouch.
Friday 21 July
The Israelis have just bombed Khiam prison. An interesting target since this was the jail in which Israel's former proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, used to torture male prisoners by attaching electrodes to their penises and female prisoners by electrocuting their breasts. When the Israeli army retreated in 2000, the Hizbollah turned the prison into a museum. Now the evidence of the SLA's cruelty has been erased. Another "terrorist" target.
The power comes back at home at 11pm and I watch Israel's consul general, Arye Mekel, telling the BBC that Israel is "doing the Lebanese a favour" by bombing Hizbollah, insisting that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing". So now I understand. The Lebanese must thank the Israelis for destroying their lives and infrastructure. They must be grateful for all the air strikes and the dead children. It's as if the Hizbollah claimed that Israelis should be grateful to them for attacking Zionism. How far can self-delusion reach?
Saturday 22 July
I have coffee in my landlord's garden and he climbs an old wooden ladder into his fig tree and brings me a plate of fruit. "Every day it gives us our figs," he tells me. "We sit under our tree in the afternoon and with the breeze off the sea, it is like air conditioning." I look at his little paradise of pot plants and sip my Arabic coffee from a little blue mug. We watch the warships sliding into Beirut port. "What will happen when all the foreigners have gone?" he asks. That's what we are all asking. We shall find out this week.
Sunday 16 July
It is the first time I have actually seen a missile in this war. They fly too fast - or you are too busy trying to run away to look for them - but this morning, Abed and I actually see one pierce the smoke above us. "Habibi (my friend)!" he cries, and I start screaming "Turn the car round, turn it round" and we drive away for our lives from the southern suburbs. As we turn the corner there is a shattering explosion and a mountain of grey smoke blossoming from the road we have just left. What happened to the men and women we saw running for their lives from that Israeli rocket? We do not know. In air raids, all you see is the few square yards around you. You get out and you survive and that is enough.
I go home to my apartment on the Corniche and find that the electricity is cut. Soon, no doubt, the water will be cut. But I sit on my balcony and reflect that I am not crammed into a filthy hotel in Kandahar or Basra but living in my own home and waking each morning in my own bed. Power cuts and fear and the lack of petrol now that Israel is bombing gas stations mean that the canyon of traffic which honks and roars outside my home until two in the morning has gone. When I wake in the night, I hear the birds and the wash of the Mediterranean and the gentle brushing of palm leaves.
I went to buy groceries this evening. There is no more milk but plenty of water and bread and cheese and fish. When Abed pulls up to let me out of the car, the man in the 4x4 behind us puts his hand permanently on the horn, and when I get out of Abed's car, he mouths the words "Kess uchtak" at me. "Fuck your sister." It is the first time I have been cursed in this war. The Lebanese do not normally swear at foreigners. They are a polite people. I hold my hand out, palm down and twist it palm upwards in the Lebanese manner, meaning "what's the problem?". But he drives away. Anyway, I don't have a sister.
Monday 17 July
The phones are still working and my mobile chirrups like a budgerigar. Too many of the calls are from friends who want to know if they should flee Beirut or flee Lebanon or from Lebanese who are outside Lebanon and want to know if they should return. I can hear the bombs rumbling across Hizbollah's area of the southern suburbs but I cannot answer these questions. If I advise friends to stay and they are killed, I am responsible. If I tell them to leave and they are killed in their cars, I am responsible. If I tell them to come back and they die, I am responsible. So I tell them how dangerous Lebanon has become and tell them it is their decision. But I feel great sorrow for them. Many have been refugees four times in 24 years. Today I am called by a Lebanese woman with Lebanese and Iranian citizenship and one child with a US passport and another with only a Lebanese passport. Her situation is hopeless. I suggest she travels to the Christian mountains around Faraya and try to find a chalet. It will be safe there. I hope.
I come back from Kfar Chim where part of an Israeli missile or an aircraft wing has just partially decapitated the driver of a car. He looked so tragic, his head lolling forward in the driver's seat, just looking at all the blood splashing down his body on to the floor. Abed was getting spooked because I spent too long at the scene. The Israelis always come back. "Habibi, you took too long. Never stay that long again!" He is right. The Israelis did come back and bombed the Lebanese army.
Now my housemaid Fidele is spooked. She thinks it is too dangerous to travel from the Christian district of Beirut to my home since the Israelis blew the top off the local lighthouse 400 metres from my front door. Fidele is from Togo and makes fantastic pizzas (I recommend her Pizza Togolaisi to anyone) so I send Abed off to pick up her up and bring her to my home for one hour. She puts my dirty clothes in the washing machine, and after five minutes the power goes off and we have to take them all out and try again tomorrow.
Tuesday 18 July
At 3.45am, I wake to the sound of tank tracks and a big military motor heaving away in the darkness. I go downstairs to find that the Lebanese army has positioned an American-made armoured personnel carrier in the car park opposite my home. It has been placed strategically under some palm trees, as if this will stop Israeli aircraft from spotting it. I don't like this at all and nor does my landlord, Mustafa, who lives downstairs. The Lebanese army is now an occasional target for the Israelis and this little behemoth looks like a palm tree disguised as a tank. Later in the morning, I call a general in the army who is a friend of mine and army operations calls me back to check the location. It takes an hour before they find the car park on their maps. Then I receive another call telling me that the APC is next to my home to prevent the Hizbollah from using the car park to launch another missile at an Israeli ship. The empty American Community School is just up my road. The Lebanese army is defending us.
The first French warship arrives to pick up French citizens fleeing Lebanon. It steams proudly past my balcony. Many French naval vessels are named after great military leaders, and this particular anti-submarine frigate is called the Jean-de-Vienne. I pad off to consult my little library of French history books. Jean de Vienne, it turns out, was a 14th-century French admiral who raided the Sussex town of Rye and the Isle of Wight and who was killed - oh lordy, lordy - fighting in the Crusades against the Muslim Turks. A suitable ship to start France's evacuation of the ancient Crusader port of Beirut.
Wednesday 19 July
Now that the Israelis are destroying whole apartment blocks in the Shia southern suburbs - there is a permanent umbrella of smoke over the seafront, stretching far out into the Mediterranean - tens of thousands of Shia Muslims have come to seek sanctuary in the undamaged part of Beirut, in the parks and schools and beside the sea. They walk back and forth outside my home, the women in chadors, their bearded husbands and brothers silently looking at the sea, their children playing happily around the palm trees. They speak to me with anger about Israel but choose not to discuss the depth of cynicism of the Shia Hizbollah who provoked Israel's brutality by capturing two of its soldiers. As well as the Hizbollah, the Israelis are now targeting food factories and trucks and buses - not to mention 46 bridges - and the bin men are now reluctant to pick up the rubbish skips each night for fear their innocent rubbish truck is mistaken for a missile launcher. So no rubbish collection this morning.
The local Beirut papers are filled with photographs that would never be seen in the pages of a British paper: of decapitated babies and women with no legs or arms or of old men in bits. Israel's air raids are promiscuous and - when you see the results as we now do with our own eyes - obscene. No doubt Hizbollah's equally innocent civilian victims in Israel look like this but the slaughter in Lebanon is on an infinitely more terrible scale. The Lebanese look at these pictures and see them on television - as does the rest of the Arab world - and I wonder how many of them are provoked to think of another 9/11 or 7/7 or whatever the next date will be.
What does war do to people? Later, I am talking to an Austrian journalist and idly ask what her father does. "He drinks," she says. Why? "Because his father was killed at Stalingrad."
I walk across with tea for the soldiers on the APC in the car park. They are all from Baalbek, Shia Muslims. They would never open fire on a Hizbollah missile crew. Then I return home from another visit to the southern suburbs and find they have gone, along with their behemoth. The first good news of the day.
The minister of finance holds a press conference to talk of the billions of dollars of damage being done to Lebanon by Israel's air raids. "We have had pledges of aid from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar," he proudly announces. "And from Syria and Iran?" the man from Irish radio asks, naming Hizbollah's two principal supporters in the Muslim world. "Nothing," the minister replies dismissively.
Thursday 20 July
A bad day for messages. Phone calls from the States to tell me I am an anti-Semite for criticising Israel. Here we go again. To call decent folk anti-Semites is soon going to make anti-Semitism respectable, I tell the callers before asking them to tell the Israeli air force to stop killing civilians. Then a fax from a Jewish friend in California to tell me that a man called Lee Kaplan - "a columnist for the Israel National News", whatever that is - has condemned me in print for developing a "high-paid speaking career among anti-Semites". Unlike Benjamin Netanyahu and many others I can think of, I never take money for lecturing - ever - but to smear the thousands of ordinary Americans who listen to me as anti-Semites is outrageous.
Another fax from the editor of the forthcoming paperback edition of my book, apologising for bothering me at a "very difficult (sic) time" but promising to send me page proofs by DHL which is still operating to Beirut. I go downtown to check this with DHL. Yes, the man says, parcels for Lebanon are sent to Jordan and then in a truck via Damascus to Beirut. A truck, I say to myself. Ouch.
Friday 21 July
The Israelis have just bombed Khiam prison. An interesting target since this was the jail in which Israel's former proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, used to torture male prisoners by attaching electrodes to their penises and female prisoners by electrocuting their breasts. When the Israeli army retreated in 2000, the Hizbollah turned the prison into a museum. Now the evidence of the SLA's cruelty has been erased. Another "terrorist" target.
The power comes back at home at 11pm and I watch Israel's consul general, Arye Mekel, telling the BBC that Israel is "doing the Lebanese a favour" by bombing Hizbollah, insisting that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing". So now I understand. The Lebanese must thank the Israelis for destroying their lives and infrastructure. They must be grateful for all the air strikes and the dead children. It's as if the Hizbollah claimed that Israelis should be grateful to them for attacking Zionism. How far can self-delusion reach?
Saturday 22 July
I have coffee in my landlord's garden and he climbs an old wooden ladder into his fig tree and brings me a plate of fruit. "Every day it gives us our figs," he tells me. "We sit under our tree in the afternoon and with the breeze off the sea, it is like air conditioning." I look at his little paradise of pot plants and sip my Arabic coffee from a little blue mug. We watch the warships sliding into Beirut port. "What will happen when all the foreigners have gone?" he asks. That's what we are all asking. We shall find out this week. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
