Self-fulfilling prophecy

By Azmi Bishara

"Journalist: How will the deaths of Israeli soldiers today affect your plans?

Israeli Army Spokesman: You saw that massacre of 12 Israelis .. it will ...

Journalist: Massacre you said? But those were soldiers and this is war.

Spokesman: No, it was a massacre because the people who fired the missiles weren't targeting soldiers. They were targeting Israeli civilians but killed the soldiers by accident.

Journalist: But you also committed massacres in Qana and elsewhere.

Spokesman: No, there was no massacre in Qana. Hizbullah fighters were the targets of the bombardment but civilians were hit by accident.

This nightmarish gibberish, which would make any journalist quit his job, a spectator smash his TV screen and a dialogue participant abandon his faith in dialogue, is not from Alice in Wonderland. It is an excerpt taken verbatim from an interview on an Arab satellite station with a young spokesman for the Israeli Defence Forces.

Now, when Israeli soldiers die it's a massacre, whereas the wiping out of entire families in the course of the aerial bombardment of their homes and villages doesn't rate the term. That's not a massacre but an "accident" or, in the euphemistic jargon of the science of the war against terrorism, collateral damage."

" Hizbullah isn't looking for peace with Israel. Nor is it interested in receiving brownie points for being "enlightened" or "moderate". It sees its own enlightenment, as Israel sees hers, in its rationalisation and organisational strength. Ideologically, morally and in its origins, Hizbullah is founded within the Palestinian historical narrative, related by Palestinian refugees to the farmers and poets of Lebanon ever since catastrophe brought the poor of the Lebanese south and Palestinian refugees together in the same saga. Hizbullah will not lend itself as fodder to the "dialogue and coexistence industry". It is too deep for that. It is too busy writing a hands-on theology for the wretched of the Arab earth. This leaves very little opening for opportunist intellectuals to sell Hizbullah to the West. Hizbullah is not concerned with "the recognition of Israel" and, unlike the PLO and others, it refuses to engage in a discourse that involves using basic principles as bargaining chips. Hizbullah thrives on fighting as an equal, not on being compensated for its absence in the field by a false equality around the negotiating table. Hizbullah is not in the business of selling souvenir pictures of Nasrallah or in the business of courting the admiration of others. Hizbullah simply doesn't act like racists think a Muslim or Arab should act. The Muslim or Arab, according to the common racist assumption, will either sell out his principles and identity, toe the moderate line, live in peace as an inferior and ingratiate himself to his superiors or he will recoil into a nihilistic hatred and rejection of the other and of the West, thereby confirming his backwardness and the racist assumptions."

---
A great article by Azmi!