| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 10:06 am Post subject: Buchanan: Olmert's War – And The Next One |
| Buchanan: Olmert's War – And The Next One:
http://www.antiwar.com/buchanan/?articleid=9538
August 15, 2006
Olmert's War, and the Next One
by Patrick J. Buchanan
When Israel answered the Hezbollah raid that captured two soldiers with air strikes on Lebanon's airport, runways, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, buses, apartment houses, and power plants, we who questioned the wisdom and morality of what Israel was doing were denounced as anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.
Turns out we were right. In private, even Israeli army generals were raging that Israel was fighting a stupid, losing war.
Ehud Olmert, who gave Chief of Staff Dan Halutz the green light to launch the shock-and-awe air campaign, cannot survive the moral, political, and strategic disaster his country has suffered.
While the Israeli air force was hammering Lebanon, Hezbollah rained down 3,000 rockets on Israel and fought off pinprick raids. When the Israeli army, after a month, moved in force against the real enemy, Hezbollah, Israel had already suffered irreparable damage to its reputation as a fighting nation and a moral country.
As the war began, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Bahrain all condemned Hezbollah, as did the Beirut government, for inciting the war. But with Hezbollah's defiant resistance, as Israel smashed up Lebanon, the Arab street rallied to Nasrallah. Arab regimes followed.
The losers?
Lebanon, which suffered 800 dead, thousands injured, and 1 million made refugees, saw its infrastructure destroyed and nation set back 20 years. If the government falls or Lebanon becomes a failed state, it will be an even greater calamity for the Lebanese, and for Israel and the Middle East. For the mightiest political and military force in Lebanon, and likely heir apparent to power slipping away from Prime Minister Siniora, is now Hezbollah and Hassan Nasrallah.
Says Walid Jumblatt, savage critic of Hezbollah and its Syrian alliance, "Hassan Nasrallah has won militarily and politically, and has become a new leader like Nasser."
Another loser is Israel, and Olmert, who seized on the border skirmish to launch his Lebanon war. Writes Ari Shavit of Ha'aretz:
"Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeats, and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say, oops, I made a mistake."
Olmert and Halutz are history. The Kadima Party regime will fall. Left and Right are already tearing at its flanks.
What does this mean? The Sharon-Olmert policy of unilateral withdrawal from the territories is dead. The Hamas-led Palestinian authority, the creation of the freest and fairest elections ever held in Palestine, is on a death watch, after Israel's starvation blockade and ravaging of the Gaza Strip, which has left 150 Palestinians dead.
A new Israeli regime will not withdraw from any more land, nor shut down any more settlements, nor vacate any part of Jerusalem, nor negotiate with a Palestinian Authority led by Hamas, or by a PLO that is unable to disarm Hamas. We are at a dead end, as George W. Bush will not push the Israelis to do anything, nor will Congress.
America is another loser.
The United States knew in advance Israel planned to attack and, if possible, destroy Hezbollah. And America approved.
But when Olmert launched an air war on Lebanon, instead, Bush cheered him on, refused to rein in attacks on civilian targets, sent smart bombs and used U.S. influence at the United Nations to block an early cease-fire. Bush-Cheney are thus morally and politically culpable for what was done to Lebanon and the democratic government there that was born of a "Cedar Revolution" George Bush himself had championed.
Congress poodled along with Bush, so Bush will not be called to account, as he would be were any other nation but Israel involved. From Morocco to the Gulf, there is probably not a country today that would welcome Bush, or where he would be safe on a state visit.
Where does this leave us? With Israel's failure to achieve its strategic objectives in Lebanon and America having failed to attain its strategic objectives in Iraq, Nasrallah emerges triumphant, and Syria and Iran emerge unscathed and gloating.
What comes next? That is obvious.
With our War Party discredited by the failed policies it cheered on in Lebanon and Iraq, there will come a clamor that Bush must "go to the source" of all our difficulty – Iran. Only thus can the War Party redeem itself for having pushed us and Israel into two unnecessary and ruinous wars. And the drumbeat for war on Iran has already begun.
"[T]he dangers continue to mount abroad," wails The Weekly Standard in its lead editorial. "How Bush deals with Ahmadinejad's terror-supporting and nuclear-weapons pursuing Iran will be the test" of his administration. Yes, the supreme test.
Bush is on notice from the neocons and War Party that have all but destroyed his presidency: Either you take down Iran, Mr. Bush, or you are a failed president.
If the president is still listening to these people, Lord help the Republic.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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Bamford discusses 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda on MSNBC's 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann':
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/07/bamford-discusses-a-clean-break-on-msnbc-s-countdown.php
The following article is right in accordance with the 'A Clean Break' agenda as 'A Clean Break' was written for Netanyahu who is apparently going to replace Olmert soon:
“Honor First”; the liberation of Lebanon :
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14620.htm
AIPAC Congratulates Itself on the Slaughter in Lebanon
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/17/aipac-congratulates-itself-on-the-slaughter-in-lebanon.php
Tom Hayden: Can the Bombing of Iran be Stopped?:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/can-the-bombing-of-iran-b_b_27438.html
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/buchanan/?articleid=9538
IN WAKE OF QANA, ISRAEL AND U.S. SEEN AS TERRORISTS :
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/04/in-wake-of-qana-israel-and-u-s-seen-as-terrorists.php
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Israel's attack on Lebanon resulted in 9/11:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/17/israel-s-attack-on-lebanon-resulted-in-9-11.php
Last edited by Alpha on Sun Aug 20, 2006 7:46 am; edited 7 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 10:09 am Post subject: AIPAC Congratulates Itself on the Slaughter in Lebanon |
| James Bamford discussed 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda for Iraq, Syria and Iran on MSNBC's 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann':
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/07/bamford-discusses-a-clean-break-on-msnbc-s-countdown.php
"A Clean Break":
What is "A Clean Break?" Author James Bamford explains on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's Countdown show:
http://www.corvuswire.com/cleanbreak.htm
Iran: The Next War:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/28/iran-the-next-war-for-israel.php
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August 16, 2006
"Look What You've Done!"
AIPAC Congratulates Itself on the Slaughter in Lebanon
By JOHN WALSH
"My fellow American," Howard Friedman, President of AIPAC, begins his letter of July 30 to friends and supporters of AIPAC, "Look what you've done"! After warning that "Israel is fighting a pivotal war for its life," by which he means Israel's wanton slaughter and all-out destruction in Lebanon, Freiedman condemns "the expected chorus of international condemnation of Israel's actions" and Europe's call for "a cease-fire immediately." Then he exults: "only ONE nation in the world came out and flatly declared: Let Israel finish the job. . That nation is the United States of America--and the reason it had such a clear, unambiguous view of the situation is YOU and the rest of America Jewry." (All emphases in the original here and below.) Here I must take issue with President Friedman since I bet that most Jewish Americans, in contrast to the AIPAC crowd, were horrified by the slaughter in Lebanon. In fact if anyone other than President Friedman wrote this, he would be accused of fabricating a Jewish plot and labeled a nutty conspiracy theorist and scurrilous anti-semite.)
"How do we do it"? President Friedman asks a little further on. The answer is "decades of long hard work which never ends." Not only is it hard work--but it's eternal. However, President Friedman is not content with generalities and gives us some of AIPAC's trade secrets. Here are two notables:
"AIPAC meets with every candidate running for Congress. These candidates receive in-depth briefings to help them completely understand the complexities of Israel's predicament and that of the Middle East as a whole. We even ask each candidate to author a 'position paper' on their views of the U.S.-Israel relationship--so it's clear where they stand on the subject." (Would it not be great to see these "position papers"? I wonder how many candidates would release them? And what do the candidates get for all this effort? A pat on the back?)
"Members of Congress, staffers and administration officials have come to rely on AIPACs memos. They are VERY busy people and they know that they can count on AIPAC for clear-eyed analysis.. We present this information in concise form to elected officials. The information and analyses are impeccable--after all our reputation is at stake. This results in policy and legislation that make up Israel's lifeline." (Another way to read this is that the pea-brained hillbillies who make up most of the Congress can be led by the nose if the memos are simple enough. Testimony to this fact enters my mailbox, as I write, in the form of a must-read interview with Noam Chomsky, which details just how distorted the discussion of Israel and the war on Lebanon has become in the U.S.)
President Friedman's letter continues with more headliners: "Unfortunately, our work has just begun"! "Hizballah must be defeated." And finally, "The war is a diversion"!!!! This last section argues that the war in Lebanon is a "distraction," to "divert attention away from Iran's nuclear weapons program"! (In case you haven't noticed President Friedman loves exclamation points, which leads one to wonder whether a good dose of lithium might not be in order.) But this "analysis' is hopelessly confused since Israel started the war on Lebanon using a minor border skirmish as an excuse - as Chomsky points out in the interview alluded to above. It leaves one wondering about AIPAC's analyses. Are they "clear-eyed" as Friedman claims, or wild-eyed?
President Friedman closes with the exhortation: "Now is the time for us, American Jews, to stand up and tell our elected officials that they must demand Iran halt its pursuit of atomic arms." In other words, next stop Iran if AIPAC can swing it. And in that lies a great danger. The Bush administration is losing ever more of its base and only the neocon establishment and AIPAC remain securely in its camp. (Even some of the born-agains are deserting.) With the November elections coming, Rove and Bush desperately need AIPAC support, and so they may be even more susceptible than usual to its demands for going after Iran. Indeed this is a dangerous time.
Last edited by Alpha on Thu Aug 17, 2006 1:54 am; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 10:12 am Post subject: |
| "Hawkish Israeli Lobby Wants War with Iran Next!"
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/12448/index.php
When are we (as patriotic Americans) going to take back America from these traitorous fifth columnists (the next world war is looming because of their nefarious Israel first agenda):
PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY IN US UNDER ATTACK
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060...
Intl. Intelligence
WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- Two of America's top scholars have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive" role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication.
Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life.
They claim that the Israel lobby has distorted American policy and operates against American interests, that it has organized the funneling of more than $140 billion dollars to Israel and "has a stranglehold" on the U.S. Congress, and its ability to raise large campaign funds gives its vast influence over Republican and Democratic administrations, while its role in Washington think tanks on the Middle East dominates the policy debate.
And they say that the Lobby works ruthlessly to suppress questioning of its role, to blacken its critics and to crush serious debate about the wisdom of supporting Israel in U.S. public life.
"Silencing skeptics by organizing blacklists and boycotts -- or by suggesting that critics are anti-Semites -- violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends," Walt and Mearsheimer write.
"The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned," they add, in the 12,800-word article published in the latest issue of The London Review of Books.
The article focuses strongly on the role of the "neo-conservatives" within the Bush administration in driving the decision to launch the war on Iraq.
"The main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to the Likud," Mearsheimer and Walt argue." Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests."
"The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) or WINEP (Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy), and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war," Walt and Mearsheimer write.
The article, which is already stirring furious debate in U.S. academic and intellectual circles, also explores the historical role of the Lobby.
"For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel," the article says.
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?" Professors Walt and Mearsheimer add.
"The thrust of U.S. policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country - in this case, Israel -- are essentially identical," they add.
They argue that far from being a strategic asset to the United States, Israel "is becoming a strategic burden" and "does not behave like a loyal ally." They also suggest that Israel is also now "a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.
"Saying that Israel and the U.S. are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around," they add. "Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits."
They question the argument that Israel deserves support as the only democracy in the Middle East, claiming that "some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens."
The most powerful force in the Lobby is AIPAC, the American-Israel Public affairs Committee, which Walt and Mearsheimer call "a de facto agent for a foreign government," and which they say has now forged an important alliance with evangelical Christian groups.
The bulk of the article is a detailed analysis of the way they claim the Lobby managed to change the Bush administration's policy from "halting Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state" and divert it to the war on Iraq instead. They write "Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical."
"Thanks to the lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians," and conclude that "Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and U.S. policy more even-handed."
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Mearsheimer replies to the irate "Israel Lobby"
Letters - The Israel Lobby - From John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt.
We wrote 'The Israel Lobby' in order to begin a discussion of a subject that had become difficult to address openly in the United States (LRB, 23 March). We knew it was likely to generate a strong reaction, and we are not surprised that some of our critics have chosen to attack our characters or misrepresent our arguments. .... Must Read !!!
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n09/letters.html
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html
Additional at following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
Irmep - AIPAC Espionage Case Dismissal Gambit Fails:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/11/irmep-aipac-espionage-case-dismissal-gambit-fails.php
Nuclear War Starting in 10 Days?:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/the-americas/2006/08/12/nuclear-war-starting-in-10-days.php
Why Do They Want To Kill Us?:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/10/why-do-they-want-to-kill-us.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 8:08 pm Post subject: Israeli Military Policy Under Fire After Qana Attack |
| FORWARD (No URL)
Israeli Military Policy Under Fire After Qana Attack
Ori Nir | Fri. August 04, 2006
WASHINGTON — As Jerusalem defends itself against worldwide condemnation over a deadly air strike that killed dozens of Lebanese children, current and former Israeli officials acknowledge that the Israeli military has loosened the restrictions on targeting militants in populated areas.
After an Israeli air force raid Sunday on the Lebanese village of Qana left dozens of civilians dead, many of them children, human rights groups accused Israel of committing a “war crime.” Many critics — including Israeli ones — are questioning the military’s policy of bombing in densely populated Lebanese areas. As of earlier this week, more than 550 civilians had been killed in Lebanon during the current conflict, with Lebanese officials claiming that the civilian death toll has exceeded 750.
Following the Qana deaths, Israeli authors and intellectuals signed a petition calling for an immediate cease-fire and protesting the killing of civilians. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel called for an official commission of inquiry to investigate the military’s bombing policies in Lebanon.
One of Israel’s top political commentators, Nahum Barnea of Yediot Aharonot, also raised questions in his column Monday. “I am ashamed,” wrote Barnea, whose criticism reverberated in Israel this week. Barnea argued that just because he feels that the war is justified “does not grant me an exemption from torturing myself with questions.” The most piercing question, he wrote, “arose when I heard Defense Minister Amir Peretz boasting about how he has freed the army from limitations regarding the civilian population that lives alongside Hezbollah. One can understand the accidental killing of civilians, in the heat of battle. A sweeping order regarding the civilian population of South Lebanon and the Shi’ite neighborhoods of Beirut is rash, injudicious and will lead to disaster. We saw the results yesterday, with the bodies of women and children being brought out of the bombed house in Qana.”
Barnea was referring to several statements that Peretz, leader of the left-of-center Labor Party, made in the course of the past three weeks, saying that he had directed the Israeli military not to be deterred by Hezbollah’s use of civilians as “human shields.” Other Israeli officials also indicated that the military’s rules of engagement in the current fighting in Lebanon are more permissive than they have been in the past. Some said that Israel is attempting to “inflict pain” on Lebanon’s civilian population to put public pressure on Hezbollah to disarm.
The Israeli military’s chief of staff, Dan Halutz, a lieutenant general, was quoted as saying that for every building hit in Haifa by a Hezbollah rocket, Israel would hit 10 high-rise buildings in the Shi’ite residential neighborhoods of Southern Beirut. And Israeli air force pilots indicated that the process of vetting potential targets to minimize the chance of hitting civilians is less meticulous in the current bombings in Lebanon than it was in previous bombing campaigns.
“There are efforts, as always, to minimize collateral damage, but less so than when [Israel] bombs in Gaza,” said Amos Guiora. A lieutenant colonel (reserve), Guiora is the former commander of the Israeli military’s School of Military Law and currently a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. In this case, he said, rockets are launched into Israel by the thousands from a sovereign neighboring country, and therefore “the rules of the game have been significantly changed.”
In particular, what’s changed are the orders regarding the admissibility of striking buildings or other sites adjacent to residential neighborhoods, from which Hezbollah combatants are suspected to be operating. Hezbollah fighters, according to Israeli military reports and other data, launched rockets from sites adjacent to the building that was hit in Qana on Sunday. In addition, Hezbollah fighters appear to have been launching rockets next to the United Nations observation post in Hiam, in which four international observers were killed by an Israeli strike July 26.
Last week, a colonel, who is an Israeli air force squadron commander gave an unusual interview to Ha’aretz, authorized by the military, in which he laid out some of the bombing policies. Often, he said, one of the militants firing rockets is seen seeking refuge in a residential home in South Lebanon. Such a house, he said, “ought to be struck, even if a family lives in it.” Such a family, he said, has allowed combatants into its home, and “hence joined those who are fighting us.” The lives of Israeli civilians are more important to him than the lives of Lebanese civilians, the squadron commander said on condition of anonymity, a routine practice for Israeli military officers.
Asked about the air strikes that leveled the pro-Hezbollah Shi’ite neighborhood of al-Dahiya in southern Beirut, the senior officer said that the area was a legitimate target because it was inhabited by Hezbollah personnel and their families.
Some experts on humanitarian international law say that the policies described by the senior air force officer are being justified on a blatant misinterpretation of international law. At the same time, they add, international law is open to broad interpretation regarding the admissibility of striking civilians.
While intentionally targeting civilians or civilian property is forbidden, international law takes a more nuanced approach to the unintentional striking of civilians when pursuing military targets.
Targeting sites that are civilian in nature but used by combatants is permissible as long as such sites provide an “effective” contribution to the enemy’s military activities, and as long as their destruction or neutralization provides “a definite military advantage.” When targeting such sites, the impact of the attack on civilians must be carefully weighed against the military advantage that the attack serves. Attacks should not be undertaken if the civilian harm outweighs the military advantage, or if a similar military advantage could be secured with less civilian harm, experts say. Each attack on such a target is required to be weighed individually under these criteria — known in international law as the “proportionality” test. The term has been used frequently in the context of the current confrontation, but seldom in the appropriate context of what international law prescribes regarding civilian casualties.
Whether Israel’s policies generally pass the proportionality test is a matter of intense controversy.
Michael Walzer, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and a leading authority on morality in warfare, told the Forward that Israel’s conduct is well within the confines of international law. “From a moral perspective, Israel has mostly been fighting legitimately,” Walzer said. If Israeli commanders ever face an international tribunal, he added, “the defense lawyers will have a good case,” mainly because Hezbollah uses civilians as human shields. In several recent articles, Harvard Law School’s Alan Dershowitz has advanced similar arguments.
Human rights groups counter that Hezbollah’s conduct does not relieve Israel from the responsibility to spare civilians, even if they receive adequate warning to flee before their neighborhoods are struck. To argue the opposite “is a complete misunderstanding of international law and is morally bankrupt,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. In a press release issued Monday, the group described the Qana killings as “the latest product of an indiscriminate bombing campaign” in Lebanon, and said that the responsibility for the tragedy “rests squarely with the Israeli military.” The group’s statement argued that Israel had launched indiscriminate bombings that constitute war crimes.
Several groups on the liberal end of the Jewish communal spectrum, including Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Tikkun Community, published a full-page advertisement Monday in The New York Times, demanding that all sides “stop the slaughter in Lebanon, Israel and the occupied territories” and that Israel immediately halt attacks on Lebanon, which are “utterly disproportionate to the initial provocation by Hezbollah.”
The left-leaning New York based Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring this week sent a letter to President Bush, calling for an immediate cease-fire. “Peace cannot be achieved by a war of attrition, which will only cause the death of more and more innocent men, women and children, and increased hatred on both sides,” the letter said.
For the most part, however, few if any of the most influential Jewish organizations are raising any moral objections to Israel’s military tactics. None of the major Jewish groups released statements of condolences, sympathy or regret before or after the Qana incident. In fact, three Jewish communal leaders, in recent conversations with reporters, said that given the large number of aerial strikes and artillery shellings in Lebanon, the number of civilian casualties was rather low.
On Monday, during a New York meeting with Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, not one member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations asked the veteran Israeli politician about the carnage in Lebanon.
Members seemed to agree when Peres said that whereas some 10,000 civilians were killed in NATO’s 78-day air campaign in Kosovo in 1999, the Lebanese civilian death toll is in the low hundreds. (The number of deaths during the NATO campaign is belived to have been about 500, with Serbian sourcing claiming 1,200 to 5,000 dead.)
“I see 100% support and not an iota of decrease in support in the Jewish community for Israel’s conduct in Lebanon,” said Martin Raffel, associate executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. The council is a policy coordinating organization that brings together 13 national Jewish agencies and 123 local Jewish communities.
Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, a leading thinker on the Jewish and Israeli use of power, said that he couldn’t find flaws in Israel’s conduct. “If I have any criticism of Israel, it is that there was an underestimation of the risk” from Hezbollah, Greenberg said.
As extraordinarily painful and cruel a reality as it is, he added, “there was a need to inflict punishment on the host [Lebanese] population” to turn the population against Hezbollah. Although people in the Jewish community “feel anguish that Jews are killing civilians, they honestly don’t think that there is any serious alternative right now,” he said.
The distinctly dovish president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, said that although questions regarding the “appropriate policies to protect [Lebanese] civilians” are warranted, “people are overwhelmingly supportive of this war, across the board” and are confident that Israel’s leadership is acting within the requirements of international law.
“We are dealing with a government that is dovish, moderate, and with a defense minister who is a certified moderate,” Yoffie said. “We are confident that even if they did make mistakes, they will know how to deal with them and maintain a positive course.”
Fri. August 04, 2006 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 8:38 pm Post subject: Swedish Professor says Israel violated UN "blue line&qu |
| Swedish Professor says Israel violated UN "blue line" in Lebanon
Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2006 11:57:23 +0300 From: "Israel Shamir"
Anders Strindberg is a consultant on Middle East politics working with
European government and law-enforcement agencies. He has also covered
Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories as a journalist since
the late 1990s, primarily for European publications
Hizbullah's attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon
By Anders Strindberg
Opinion from the August 01, 2006 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0801/p09s02-coop.html
NEW YORK - As pundits and policymakers scramble to explain events in
Lebanon, their conclusions are virtually unanimous: Hizbullah created
this crisis. "Israel" is defending itself. The underlying problem is
Arab extremism.
Sadly, this is pure analytical nonsense. Hizbullah's capture of two
Israeli soldiers on July 12 was a direct result of "Israel's" silent
but unrelenting aggression against Lebanon, which in turn is part of a
six-decades long Arab-Israeli conflict.
Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May
2000, "Israel" has violated the United Nations-monitored "blue line" on
an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah's military
doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire
Katyusha rockets into "Israel" only in response to Israeli attacks on
Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah's leadership; this indeed has been the
pattern.
In the process of its violations, "Israel" has terrorized the general
population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians.
This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was
killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock
in southern Lebanon. "Israel" has assassinated its enemies in the
streets of Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon's Shibaa
Farms area, while refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that
continue to kill and cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than
six years after the war supposedly ended. What peace did Hizbullah
shatter? Hizbullah's capture of the soldiers took place in the context
of this ongoing conflict, which in turn is fundamentally shaped by
realities in the Palestinian territories. To the vexation of "Israel"
and its allies, Hizbullah - easily the most popular political movement
in the Middle East - unflinchingly stands with the Palestinians.
Since June 25, when Palestinian fighters captured one Israeli soldier
and demanded a prisoner exchange, "Israel" has killed more than 140
Palestinians. Like the Lebanese situation, that flare-up was detached
from its wider context and was said to be "manufactured" by the enemies
of "Israel"; more nonsense proffered in order to distract from the
apparently unthinkable reality that it is the manner in which "Israel"
was created, and the ideological premises that have sustained it for
almost 60 years, that are the core of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.
Once the Arabs had rejected the UN's right to give away their land and
to force them to pay the price for European pogroms and the Holocaust,
the creation of "Israel" in 1948 was made possible only by ethnic
cleansing and annexation. This is historical fact and has been
documented by Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris. Yet "Israel"
continues to contend that it had nothing to do with the Palestinian
exodus, and consequently has no moral duty to offer redress. For six
decades the Palestinian refugees have been refused their right to
return home because they are of the wrong race. ""Israel" must remain a
Jewish state," is an almost sacral mantra across the Western political
spectrum. It means, in practice, that "Israel" is accorded the right to
be an ethnocracy at the expense of the refugees and their descendants,
now close to 5 million.
Is it not understandable that "Israel's" ethnic preoccupation
profoundly offends not only Palestinians, but many of their Arab
brethren? Yet rather than demanding that "Israel" acknowledge its
foundational wrongs as a first step toward equality and coexistence,
the Western world blithely insists that each and all must recognize
"Israel's" right to exist at the Palestinians' expense.
Western discourse seems unable to accommodate a serious, as opposed to
cosmetic concern for Palestinians' rights and liberties: The
Palestinians are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the
Negroes who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.
By what moral right does anyone tell them to be realistic and get over
themselves? That it is too much of a hassle to right the wrongs
committed against them? That the front of the bus must remain
ethnically pure?
When they refuse to recognize their occupier and embrace their racial
inferiority, when desperation and frustration causes them to turn to
violence, and when neighbors and allies come to their aid - some for
reasons of power politics, others out of idealism - we are astonished
that they are all such fanatics and extremists.
The fundamental obstacle to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is
that we have given up on asking what is right and wrong, instead asking
what is "practical" and "realistic." Yet reality is that "Israel" is a
profoundly racist state, the existence of which is buttressed by a
seemingly endless succession of punitive measures, assassinations, and
wars against its victims and their allies.
A realistic understanding of the conflict, therefore, is one that
recognizes that the crux is not in this or that incident or policy, but
in "Israel's" foundational and persistent refusal to recognize the
humanity of its Palestinian victims. Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are
driven by a desire to "wipe out Jews," as is so often claimed, but by a
fundamental sense of injustice that they will not allow to be
forgotten.
These groups will continue to enjoy popular legitimacy because they
fulfill the need for someone - anyone - to stand up for Arab rights.
"Israel" cannot destroy this need by bombing power grids or rocket
ramps. If "Israel", like its former political ally South Africa, has
the capacity to come to terms with principles of democracy and human
rights and accept egalitarian multiracial coexistence within a single
state for Jews and Arabs, then the foundation for resentment and
resistance will have been removed. If "Israel" cannot bring itself to
do so, then it will continue to be the vortex of regional violence.
Anders Strindberg, formerly a visiting professor at Damascus
University, Syria, is a consultant on Middle East politics working with
European government and law-enforcement agencies. He has also covered
Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories as a journalist since
the late 1990s, primarily for European publications. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
