WHAT THE "NEW MIDDLE EAST" LOOKS LIKE:
A toppled apartment building lies in the rubble next to other destroyed buildings, after an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, July 28, 2006.
Friday, July 28, 2006
A Palestinian man holds a portrait of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah while carrying a child on his shoulders as various Islamic flags fly, during a protest against the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Lebanon, in the West Bank town of Ramallah Friday July 28, 2006. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
Hizbollah's Victory (2000) Gilbert Achar Interviewed by Tikva Honig-Parnass
[This spring 2000 interview, originally written at the time of the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, provides useful background for understanding current events. It was first published in May 2000 in News from Within, a publication of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, and subsequently appeared as a chapter in Achcar's collection, Eastern Cauldron (Monthly Review Press). It has not previously appeared on the web.]
Q: Hizbollah's victory gives a broad blueprint of a comprehensive strategy (military, political) in defeating Israeli occupation. Can you evaluate the possibility of its reproduction elsewhere?
Achcar: In order to do so, one has to separate the various elements of this "broad blueprint" as you call it. Let us start with the military aspect, since you mention it: I would say that the peculiarities of the Lebanese terrain should be as obvious to anyone in the Arab world as the peculiarities of the Iraqi terrain are now to anyone in Washington who took the 1991 Gulf War as a "broad blueprint" for further US interventions. I mean that, just as the desert is the ideal terrain for taking full advantage of the superiority in air power (as proven by the great contrast between the six weeks of carpet-bombing of the Iraqi troops in 1991 and the poor results of NATO's air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999), the mountainous and populous character of southern Lebanon should be taken into consideration before generalizing its experience into a "broad blueprint".
This being said, what should be emphasized in the first place is that the victory in southern Lebanon was not a "military" victory. The Israeli army has not been defeated militarily: it was much less exhausted than the US forces in Vietnam, and even in the latter case it would be quite improper to talk of a "military defeat." In both cases, the defeat is primarily a political defeat of the governments, against a background of an increasingly reluctant population in the invader country. In that regard, the military action finds its value in its political impact, and not primarily in its direct military impact. The guerrilla actions of the Lebanese Resistance against the occupation -- which was very far, even proportionally, from matching the scale of the Vietnamese Resistance -- were mainly effective through their impact on the Israeli population, just as the coffins of GI's landing back in the US were during the Vietnam War. In both cases, the population of the invader country became more and more opposed to a war effort that was clearly devoid of any moral justification.
This had already been experienced by Israel since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The withdrawal from Beirut in 1982, and later on from most of the occupied Lebanese territory in 1985, were mainly motivated by the fact that the Israeli population could not endorse a situation in which Israeli soldiers were facing death every day for the sake of an occupation which could hardly be justified, even from a mainstream Zionist view. So the key issue is that of the balance between the cost and benefits of an occupation: whereas in the Golan the benefits for Israel exceed the present costs, in southern Lebanon the reverse was very obviously true.
Let us now extrapolate to the Palestinian occupied territories: during twenty years the benefits clearly exceeded the costs from the viewpoint of Israeli "security." The desperate "guerrilla" operations of the Palestinian Resistance could not counterbalance the feeling of enhanced security stemming from the extension of the border to the Jordan River. The situation began to change dramatically with the mass mobilization of the Intifada. This made the cost nearly intolerable for the morale of the Israeli army and for the reputation of Israel in its backer countries. The pressure mounted within the Israeli army, up to its highest ranks, in favor of a withdrawal of the troops from the populated areas, and their redeployment in those strategic parts of the West Bank where no Palestinians are concentrated.
It is precisely to this pressure from the military that Rabin was responding when he entered the Oslo negotiations. He tried to get the highest possible price for the implementation of this withdrawal from a PLO leadership that had been accumulating concessions and capitulations for many years. And he got what he wanted, to a degree that he could not have even imagined when he started the talks with the Arafat leadership! Instead of building on the impetus of the Intifada, and doing everything possible to sustain it until they got the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the entire populated areas -- without betraying anything of what they stood for previously and with very minimal accommodations, negotiated not by the PLO but by the leadership of the Intifada within the territories -- the Arafat leadership went into what even some Zionist commentators described as an ignominious surrender, leading to the execrable situation prevailing now.
Hizbollah acted differently: they kept up the pressure uncompromisingly. And they forced the unconditional and total withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Lebanese territories occupied since 1978 (the remnant goes back to the 1967 War). A tremendous victory, indeed! And surely a feat that the Palestinian population will ponder and from which they will draw some inspiration.
Q: To what extent is the Hizbollah victory a slap in the face for the imperialist agenda in the region? What might we expect from it in the future?
Achcar: The Lebanese victory is certainly a defeat for the US agenda which, like that of its Israeli ally, foresaw the insertion of this withdrawal into an overall peace agreement with Syria including all sorts of conditions, concessions and guarantees obtained for Israel. Besides, Israel is the "most brilliant" proxy of the US armed forces, the one always quoted as an example to follow. And here is a withdrawal, taking the shape of a debacle, evoking irresistibly the images of the US debacle in Vietnam, in1975 -- incidentally just at the time of the 25th anniversary of the latter! This is a new vindication of the famous "dare to struggle, dare to win" that inspired so bravely the Vietnamese Resistance. And it can be expected that it will contribute to reversing the winds of defeatism that have swept through such a big part of those who once used to fight imperialist domination.
However with regard to the US agenda in the Middle East, I think that the main change in the Israeli agenda -- which will certainly be integrated in the agenda of the next US administration -- is that the prospect of a peace treaty with Syria is pushed back indefinitely. The Zionist establishment is definitely not eager to relinquish the Golan for the sake of just establishing relations with Syria, relations that will never be "normal" anyhow. And they are all the less eager to do so in that the Syrian dictator Hafiz Al-Assad is on the verge of death [he died in June 2000] and the political future of the country is highly uncertain.
Q: Why has the Lebanese victory been claimed by Hizbollah alone? Were not other forces -- Palestinians, Lebanese Left -- involved in the resistance movement? If not, why not?
Achcar: The reason Hizbollah appeared as the only father of victory (as the saying goes, victory usually has several fathers, whereas defeat is an orphan) is that they did everything they could to monopolize the prestige of the resistance movement. After the 1982 Israeli invasion, you had an uneasy coexistence and competition between two tendencies in the fight against the occupier: the Lebanese National Resistance, dominated by the Lebanese Communist Party, and the Islamic Resistance, dominated by Hizbollah. The Palestinian forces had been wiped out from southern Lebanon by the invaders; those remaining in the refugee camps were not really a match for Hizbollah, especially since some Lebanese forces like the Shiite communalist militias of Amal were keen on preventing them from spreading again out of the camps. Amal are still there -- they are among those who recuperated the stretch of land abandoned by Israel and its local proxy. But they were never a key force in the Resistance movement: they lost their impetus long ago to the benefit of Hizbollah, and turned into a purely conservative and patronage-based party.
Hizbollah conducted all sorts of operations to establish their monopoly over the resistance movement, up to repeated onslaughts against the Communists, murdering some of their key Shiite cadres in particular. The CP behaved in a most servile manner, not daring to retaliate and instead calling on the "brothers" in the Islamic Resistance to behave in a brotherly manner -- a call which has no real chance of being heard if it is not backed by decisive action to show the damage that could result, precisely, from the alternative behavior! Such an attitude contributed greatly to the progressive shift in the balance of forces to the advantage of Hizbollah. Many of the most militant members of the Lebanese left among the Shiites were attracted to Hizbollah.
We should recall that at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 there was no Hizbollah and the CP was the major militant force among the Shiite population in southern Lebanon. The party started losing ground to the advantage of Amal first, and Hizbollah later after 1982. In both cases the lesson was the same: all these movements were appealing to the same constituency, i.e. the traditionally very militant Shiite population of southern Lebanon. In such a competition, the shyest is doomed to lose inevitably, all the more so when you don't even dare to put forward your own radical program and you end up tail-ending the dominant communalist forces. Here again you need to dare to struggle and dare to win!
Hizbollah have been very effective on that score. They were definitely very "daring" in their actions, inspired by their quasi-mystical views of martyrdom. And they knew also how to win the souls and minds of the population, by making a very clever use of the significant funding they got from Iran, thus organizing all kinds of social services to the benefit of the impoverished population. To be sure, they also took advantage of the ideological winds, which blew much more in their direction than in the direction of a left that became utterly demoralized by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Q: What are the implications of the Hizbollah victory on the relation of the political forces in Lebanon? For the Palestinian refugees there? And for the entire region?
Achcar: One thing is sure. This victory will greatly enhance the appeal of Hizbollah in Lebanon, and of the Islamic fundamentalists in the whole region. In Lebanon, Hizbollah faces an objective limitation due to the religiously very composite character of the population. Hizbollah are inherently unable to win over Christians, Druzes, or even Sunni Muslims, in any significant numbers. They are no threat to the Palestinian refugees, since their Islamic universalism make them champions of the Palestinian cause. In that sense, they are actually competitors to the Palestinian forces in Lebanon, whether Arafat loyalists or left dissidents; at best they can contribute to strengthen the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist tendencies.
In that sense too, their victory is a bad omen to Arafat, obviously, as I have already explained. Among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas members are the only ones likely to be boosted by Hizbollah triumphalism. More generally, we can say that this victory will be precious for the whole Islamic fundamentalist movement in countering the negative impact of the recent events in Iran. Those who thought they could already bury Islamic fundamentalism (a French "Orientalist" recently produced a book heralding the terminal decline of this phenomenon) are blatantly refuted. As long as they have no real competitor for the embodiment of the aspirations of the downtrodden masses, and as long as the social effects of "globalization" are with us, the fundamentalists will also be part of the picture, with ups and downs naturally.
GILBERT ACHCAR grew up in Lebanon, before moving to France, where he teaches political science at the University of Paris-VIII. Among his most recent works are Eastern Cauldron (2004) and The Clash of Barbarisms (2d ed. 2006); a book of his dialogues with Noam Chomsky on the Middle East, Perilous Power, is forthcoming from Paradigm Publishers.
Q: Hizbollah's victory gives a broad blueprint of a comprehensive strategy (military, political) in defeating Israeli occupation. Can you evaluate the possibility of its reproduction elsewhere?
Achcar: In order to do so, one has to separate the various elements of this "broad blueprint" as you call it. Let us start with the military aspect, since you mention it: I would say that the peculiarities of the Lebanese terrain should be as obvious to anyone in the Arab world as the peculiarities of the Iraqi terrain are now to anyone in Washington who took the 1991 Gulf War as a "broad blueprint" for further US interventions. I mean that, just as the desert is the ideal terrain for taking full advantage of the superiority in air power (as proven by the great contrast between the six weeks of carpet-bombing of the Iraqi troops in 1991 and the poor results of NATO's air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999), the mountainous and populous character of southern Lebanon should be taken into consideration before generalizing its experience into a "broad blueprint".
This being said, what should be emphasized in the first place is that the victory in southern Lebanon was not a "military" victory. The Israeli army has not been defeated militarily: it was much less exhausted than the US forces in Vietnam, and even in the latter case it would be quite improper to talk of a "military defeat." In both cases, the defeat is primarily a political defeat of the governments, against a background of an increasingly reluctant population in the invader country. In that regard, the military action finds its value in its political impact, and not primarily in its direct military impact. The guerrilla actions of the Lebanese Resistance against the occupation -- which was very far, even proportionally, from matching the scale of the Vietnamese Resistance -- were mainly effective through their impact on the Israeli population, just as the coffins of GI's landing back in the US were during the Vietnam War. In both cases, the population of the invader country became more and more opposed to a war effort that was clearly devoid of any moral justification.
This had already been experienced by Israel since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The withdrawal from Beirut in 1982, and later on from most of the occupied Lebanese territory in 1985, were mainly motivated by the fact that the Israeli population could not endorse a situation in which Israeli soldiers were facing death every day for the sake of an occupation which could hardly be justified, even from a mainstream Zionist view. So the key issue is that of the balance between the cost and benefits of an occupation: whereas in the Golan the benefits for Israel exceed the present costs, in southern Lebanon the reverse was very obviously true.
Let us now extrapolate to the Palestinian occupied territories: during twenty years the benefits clearly exceeded the costs from the viewpoint of Israeli "security." The desperate "guerrilla" operations of the Palestinian Resistance could not counterbalance the feeling of enhanced security stemming from the extension of the border to the Jordan River. The situation began to change dramatically with the mass mobilization of the Intifada. This made the cost nearly intolerable for the morale of the Israeli army and for the reputation of Israel in its backer countries. The pressure mounted within the Israeli army, up to its highest ranks, in favor of a withdrawal of the troops from the populated areas, and their redeployment in those strategic parts of the West Bank where no Palestinians are concentrated.
It is precisely to this pressure from the military that Rabin was responding when he entered the Oslo negotiations. He tried to get the highest possible price for the implementation of this withdrawal from a PLO leadership that had been accumulating concessions and capitulations for many years. And he got what he wanted, to a degree that he could not have even imagined when he started the talks with the Arafat leadership! Instead of building on the impetus of the Intifada, and doing everything possible to sustain it until they got the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the entire populated areas -- without betraying anything of what they stood for previously and with very minimal accommodations, negotiated not by the PLO but by the leadership of the Intifada within the territories -- the Arafat leadership went into what even some Zionist commentators described as an ignominious surrender, leading to the execrable situation prevailing now.
Hizbollah acted differently: they kept up the pressure uncompromisingly. And they forced the unconditional and total withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Lebanese territories occupied since 1978 (the remnant goes back to the 1967 War). A tremendous victory, indeed! And surely a feat that the Palestinian population will ponder and from which they will draw some inspiration.
Q: To what extent is the Hizbollah victory a slap in the face for the imperialist agenda in the region? What might we expect from it in the future?
Achcar: The Lebanese victory is certainly a defeat for the US agenda which, like that of its Israeli ally, foresaw the insertion of this withdrawal into an overall peace agreement with Syria including all sorts of conditions, concessions and guarantees obtained for Israel. Besides, Israel is the "most brilliant" proxy of the US armed forces, the one always quoted as an example to follow. And here is a withdrawal, taking the shape of a debacle, evoking irresistibly the images of the US debacle in Vietnam, in1975 -- incidentally just at the time of the 25th anniversary of the latter! This is a new vindication of the famous "dare to struggle, dare to win" that inspired so bravely the Vietnamese Resistance. And it can be expected that it will contribute to reversing the winds of defeatism that have swept through such a big part of those who once used to fight imperialist domination.
However with regard to the US agenda in the Middle East, I think that the main change in the Israeli agenda -- which will certainly be integrated in the agenda of the next US administration -- is that the prospect of a peace treaty with Syria is pushed back indefinitely. The Zionist establishment is definitely not eager to relinquish the Golan for the sake of just establishing relations with Syria, relations that will never be "normal" anyhow. And they are all the less eager to do so in that the Syrian dictator Hafiz Al-Assad is on the verge of death [he died in June 2000] and the political future of the country is highly uncertain.
Q: Why has the Lebanese victory been claimed by Hizbollah alone? Were not other forces -- Palestinians, Lebanese Left -- involved in the resistance movement? If not, why not?
Achcar: The reason Hizbollah appeared as the only father of victory (as the saying goes, victory usually has several fathers, whereas defeat is an orphan) is that they did everything they could to monopolize the prestige of the resistance movement. After the 1982 Israeli invasion, you had an uneasy coexistence and competition between two tendencies in the fight against the occupier: the Lebanese National Resistance, dominated by the Lebanese Communist Party, and the Islamic Resistance, dominated by Hizbollah. The Palestinian forces had been wiped out from southern Lebanon by the invaders; those remaining in the refugee camps were not really a match for Hizbollah, especially since some Lebanese forces like the Shiite communalist militias of Amal were keen on preventing them from spreading again out of the camps. Amal are still there -- they are among those who recuperated the stretch of land abandoned by Israel and its local proxy. But they were never a key force in the Resistance movement: they lost their impetus long ago to the benefit of Hizbollah, and turned into a purely conservative and patronage-based party.
Hizbollah conducted all sorts of operations to establish their monopoly over the resistance movement, up to repeated onslaughts against the Communists, murdering some of their key Shiite cadres in particular. The CP behaved in a most servile manner, not daring to retaliate and instead calling on the "brothers" in the Islamic Resistance to behave in a brotherly manner -- a call which has no real chance of being heard if it is not backed by decisive action to show the damage that could result, precisely, from the alternative behavior! Such an attitude contributed greatly to the progressive shift in the balance of forces to the advantage of Hizbollah. Many of the most militant members of the Lebanese left among the Shiites were attracted to Hizbollah.
We should recall that at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 there was no Hizbollah and the CP was the major militant force among the Shiite population in southern Lebanon. The party started losing ground to the advantage of Amal first, and Hizbollah later after 1982. In both cases the lesson was the same: all these movements were appealing to the same constituency, i.e. the traditionally very militant Shiite population of southern Lebanon. In such a competition, the shyest is doomed to lose inevitably, all the more so when you don't even dare to put forward your own radical program and you end up tail-ending the dominant communalist forces. Here again you need to dare to struggle and dare to win!
Hizbollah have been very effective on that score. They were definitely very "daring" in their actions, inspired by their quasi-mystical views of martyrdom. And they knew also how to win the souls and minds of the population, by making a very clever use of the significant funding they got from Iran, thus organizing all kinds of social services to the benefit of the impoverished population. To be sure, they also took advantage of the ideological winds, which blew much more in their direction than in the direction of a left that became utterly demoralized by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Q: What are the implications of the Hizbollah victory on the relation of the political forces in Lebanon? For the Palestinian refugees there? And for the entire region?
Achcar: One thing is sure. This victory will greatly enhance the appeal of Hizbollah in Lebanon, and of the Islamic fundamentalists in the whole region. In Lebanon, Hizbollah faces an objective limitation due to the religiously very composite character of the population. Hizbollah are inherently unable to win over Christians, Druzes, or even Sunni Muslims, in any significant numbers. They are no threat to the Palestinian refugees, since their Islamic universalism make them champions of the Palestinian cause. In that sense, they are actually competitors to the Palestinian forces in Lebanon, whether Arafat loyalists or left dissidents; at best they can contribute to strengthen the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist tendencies.
In that sense too, their victory is a bad omen to Arafat, obviously, as I have already explained. Among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas members are the only ones likely to be boosted by Hizbollah triumphalism. More generally, we can say that this victory will be precious for the whole Islamic fundamentalist movement in countering the negative impact of the recent events in Iran. Those who thought they could already bury Islamic fundamentalism (a French "Orientalist" recently produced a book heralding the terminal decline of this phenomenon) are blatantly refuted. As long as they have no real competitor for the embodiment of the aspirations of the downtrodden masses, and as long as the social effects of "globalization" are with us, the fundamentalists will also be part of the picture, with ups and downs naturally.
GILBERT ACHCAR grew up in Lebanon, before moving to France, where he teaches political science at the University of Paris-VIII. Among his most recent works are Eastern Cauldron (2004) and The Clash of Barbarisms (2d ed. 2006); a book of his dialogues with Noam Chomsky on the Middle East, Perilous Power, is forthcoming from Paradigm Publishers.
Accidentally on Purpose by Ian Williams
With the Israeli bombing of a UN camp and the killing of four UN peacekeepers, we really do seem to be in a "deja vu" all over again phase. Already Kofi Annan is under attack for condemning the "apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a UN Observer post."
It is reminiscent of the trouble his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali got himself into last time the Israelis tried shock and awe on Lebanon back in 1996, when he failed to suppress a report that said pretty much the same thing about the IDF shelling of the UN post in Qana, which macerated some 106 Lebanese civilians to death.
It is worth remembering that of all UN Secretary Generals, Annan has done most to end Israel's isolation in the organization and maintained the closest relations with Israel's friends in the US. In the end, however, he is also an S-G who sets great store by protecting UN staff, and so the palpable anger of his statement is entirely understandable.
"This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked UN post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire. Furthermore, General Alain Pellegrino, the UN Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular UN position from attack."
So to accept it was yet another accident presupposes a level of incompetence or insubordination in the Israeli army that should see result in some serious court-martials, but never does. That feeling was doubtless exacerbated when the IDF shelled the site and prevented a rescue operation.
So what could be the motive? It is clear that there are many in the IDF with a profound contempt for the UN and all it stands for, and who would not shed many tears at such an accident. It may also rankle that UNIFIL has,with the dearth of Western reporters in much of South Lebanon, provided independent corroboration of many incidents of IDF attacks on civilians. One only has to think of the fate of the USS Liberty in 1967 for being in a position to observe what the IDF was up to when the Israeli's bombed and shelled an American ship for over an hour, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 170 more.
And most sinisterly of all, there are many Israelis -- including the government only a few days ago, who do not want an international force between them and their targets in Lebanon, who would have no great scruples about bombing a UN compound "accidentally on purpose."
This time, the "collateral damage" is not just four dead UN personnel. The bombing scotches any realistic chance of a reinforced UN or multinational peacekeeping force -" which it is worth remembering that Israel itself opposed until a few days ago, and which the war party in Israel sees as a potential obstacle to their attempts to emulate Ariel Sharon's disastrous invasion in 1982. (See the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom's ad in Ha-Aretz at the end of the article).
Already, while many countries have endorsed the general idea of putting foreign troops on the Lebanese side of the border, there has been a complete lack of specific volunteers -- for the understandable reasons that the attack on Khiyam now so forcibly demonstrates.
Thirs world militaries like the Fijians and Ghanaians make lots of money out of providing peacekeepers for UNIFIL and seem to think weekly humiliation by the Israelis and Hezbollah is worth it. There are few serious military powers would tolerate sending their troops for IDF target practice, let alone Hezbollah attacks. And who knows? If any were so bold as to put in contingents, they may well stand up to Israeli incursions as well.
Some Israel supporters are already arguing that the bombing could not have been deliberate because it was a public relations disaster for Israel. Excuse me, but only an American or Israeli commentator could say that. Manifestly, for the rest of the world, the whole Israeli campaign is a PR disaster, with massive majorities even in Blair's Britain regarding the Israeli attack as a massively disproportionate reaction, let alone how Israel's assault is turning Hezbollah into the toast of the Third World. There is some added piquancy that both the Lebanese and Iraqi prime ministers (until this week at least champions of the democratic "New Middle East") are condemning Israel's assault.
Condoleezza Rice's statement that it is "too early" for a ceasefire, when only five hundred were dead and countless more dismembered, should go down with Madeleine Albright's since regretted statement that the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as a result of sanctions was "a price worth paying."
Since Annan is already going at the end of year, which puts him beyond reach of Bolton's veto, we can but hope that he will not be browbeaten by Rice, Bolton or Bush, but will use the sacrifice of the UN observers to shame the Security Council into demanding an immediate ceasefire.
And who knows, while he is still angry, he may wish to remind them that Israel was defying Resolution 242 for many decades before 1559, and that it has to be a crucial foundation for any peace settlement for the region.
Ian Williams is the UN correspondent for the Nation and Tribune.
It is reminiscent of the trouble his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali got himself into last time the Israelis tried shock and awe on Lebanon back in 1996, when he failed to suppress a report that said pretty much the same thing about the IDF shelling of the UN post in Qana, which macerated some 106 Lebanese civilians to death.
It is worth remembering that of all UN Secretary Generals, Annan has done most to end Israel's isolation in the organization and maintained the closest relations with Israel's friends in the US. In the end, however, he is also an S-G who sets great store by protecting UN staff, and so the palpable anger of his statement is entirely understandable.
"This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked UN post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire. Furthermore, General Alain Pellegrino, the UN Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular UN position from attack."
So to accept it was yet another accident presupposes a level of incompetence or insubordination in the Israeli army that should see result in some serious court-martials, but never does. That feeling was doubtless exacerbated when the IDF shelled the site and prevented a rescue operation.
So what could be the motive? It is clear that there are many in the IDF with a profound contempt for the UN and all it stands for, and who would not shed many tears at such an accident. It may also rankle that UNIFIL has,with the dearth of Western reporters in much of South Lebanon, provided independent corroboration of many incidents of IDF attacks on civilians. One only has to think of the fate of the USS Liberty in 1967 for being in a position to observe what the IDF was up to when the Israeli's bombed and shelled an American ship for over an hour, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 170 more.
And most sinisterly of all, there are many Israelis -- including the government only a few days ago, who do not want an international force between them and their targets in Lebanon, who would have no great scruples about bombing a UN compound "accidentally on purpose."
This time, the "collateral damage" is not just four dead UN personnel. The bombing scotches any realistic chance of a reinforced UN or multinational peacekeeping force -" which it is worth remembering that Israel itself opposed until a few days ago, and which the war party in Israel sees as a potential obstacle to their attempts to emulate Ariel Sharon's disastrous invasion in 1982. (See the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom's ad in Ha-Aretz at the end of the article).
Already, while many countries have endorsed the general idea of putting foreign troops on the Lebanese side of the border, there has been a complete lack of specific volunteers -- for the understandable reasons that the attack on Khiyam now so forcibly demonstrates.
Thirs world militaries like the Fijians and Ghanaians make lots of money out of providing peacekeepers for UNIFIL and seem to think weekly humiliation by the Israelis and Hezbollah is worth it. There are few serious military powers would tolerate sending their troops for IDF target practice, let alone Hezbollah attacks. And who knows? If any were so bold as to put in contingents, they may well stand up to Israeli incursions as well.
Some Israel supporters are already arguing that the bombing could not have been deliberate because it was a public relations disaster for Israel. Excuse me, but only an American or Israeli commentator could say that. Manifestly, for the rest of the world, the whole Israeli campaign is a PR disaster, with massive majorities even in Blair's Britain regarding the Israeli attack as a massively disproportionate reaction, let alone how Israel's assault is turning Hezbollah into the toast of the Third World. There is some added piquancy that both the Lebanese and Iraqi prime ministers (until this week at least champions of the democratic "New Middle East") are condemning Israel's assault.
Condoleezza Rice's statement that it is "too early" for a ceasefire, when only five hundred were dead and countless more dismembered, should go down with Madeleine Albright's since regretted statement that the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as a result of sanctions was "a price worth paying."
Since Annan is already going at the end of year, which puts him beyond reach of Bolton's veto, we can but hope that he will not be browbeaten by Rice, Bolton or Bush, but will use the sacrifice of the UN observers to shame the Security Council into demanding an immediate ceasefire.
And who knows, while he is still angry, he may wish to remind them that Israel was defying Resolution 242 for many decades before 1559, and that it has to be a crucial foundation for any peace settlement for the region.
Ian Williams is the UN correspondent for the Nation and Tribune.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Irish museum clarifies mix-up over Israel bog text
DUBLIN (Reuters) - An ancient Irish manuscript found in a bog last week does not refer to "wiping out Israel", the National Museum of Ireland said on Thursday, after a flood of enquiries wondering at the timing of the discovery.
The National Museum of Ireland announced on Tuesday what it said was one of the most significant Irish discoveries in decades; an ancient Psalter or Book of Psalms, written around 800 AD. It said part of Psalm 83 was legible.
In modern versions of the Bible, Psalm 83 is a lament to God over other nations' attempts to wipe out Israel and many commentators wondered at the coincidence of such a discovery at a time of heightened tension in the Middle East.
"The above mention of Psalm 83 has led to misconceptions about the revealed wording and may be a source of concern for people who believe Psalm 83 deals with 'the wiping out of Israel'," the museum said in its clarification.
The confusion arose because the manuscript uses an old Latin translation of the Bible known at the Vulgate, which numbers the psalms differently from the later King James version, the 1611 English translation from which many modern texts derive.
"The Director of the National Museum of Ireland ... would like to highlight that the text visible on the manuscript does not refer to wiping out Israel but to the 'vale of tears'," the museum said.
The vale of tears is in Psalm 84 in the King James version.
"It is hoped that this clarification will serve comfort to anyone worried by earlier reports of the content of the text," the museum said.
PM urged: Stand up to Bush and call for ceasefire
Tony Blair will face fresh pressure over the Middle East crisis today when he arrives in Washington to meet President George Bush. Senior Downing Street aides said the two leaders intended to show the world they were seeking an urgent end to the hostilities in Lebanon, despite the failure of the much vaunted Rome summit on Wednesday to deliver a unified call for a truce. Continued
Arab support for Hezbollah surges in wake of fighting
According to the New York Times, there has been a strong surge in popular support among Arabs for Hezbollah since the onset of fighting, RAW STORY has learned.
At the start of the Lebanese crisis, neighboring governments, including Saudi Arabia, criticized Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war. The United States and Israel took this criticism as implied authorization for Israel escalating its attack.
Now, however, Hezbollah has held out against the Israeli military for 15 days, and public opinion throughout the Arab world has surged behind the organization, transforming its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah into a folk hero.
The Arab public has been electrified by the conflict and by television images of wounded children and distraught women. Newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs, and public poetry readings have showed praise on Hezbollah and on Nasrallah, who is seen as the exact opposite of Arab heads of state, while attacking American plans for a "new Middle East."
As a result, Arab governments have been forced to alter their official positions. Both the king of Jordan and the Saudi royal family are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington. The president of Egypt has proclaimed his attempts to arrange a ceasefire. Even al-Qaida, whose extremist Sunni leaders are normally hostile to Shi'ites like Hezbollah, has hastened to express its support for the Palestinians.
The Saudis have even warned that their 2002 offer of full recognition for Israel if it returns to its 1967 borders could be withdrawn, stating that "no one knows the repercussions...inclusing wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."
At the start of the Lebanese crisis, neighboring governments, including Saudi Arabia, criticized Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war. The United States and Israel took this criticism as implied authorization for Israel escalating its attack.
Now, however, Hezbollah has held out against the Israeli military for 15 days, and public opinion throughout the Arab world has surged behind the organization, transforming its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah into a folk hero.
The Arab public has been electrified by the conflict and by television images of wounded children and distraught women. Newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs, and public poetry readings have showed praise on Hezbollah and on Nasrallah, who is seen as the exact opposite of Arab heads of state, while attacking American plans for a "new Middle East."
As a result, Arab governments have been forced to alter their official positions. Both the king of Jordan and the Saudi royal family are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington. The president of Egypt has proclaimed his attempts to arrange a ceasefire. Even al-Qaida, whose extremist Sunni leaders are normally hostile to Shi'ites like Hezbollah, has hastened to express its support for the Palestinians.
The Saudis have even warned that their 2002 offer of full recognition for Israel if it returns to its 1967 borders could be withdrawn, stating that "no one knows the repercussions...inclusing wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."
The neocon resurgence
Once again the Bush administration is floating on a wave of euphoria. Israel's offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon has liberated the utopian strain of neoconservatism that had been traduced by Iraq's sectarian civil war. And the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has propelled herself forward as chief cheerleader. "What we're seeing here," she said, "are the birth pangs of a new Middle East." At every press conference she repeats the phrase "a new Middle East" as though its incantation is magical.
Her jaunt to the region is intended to lend the appearance of diplomacy in order to forestall it. As explained to me by several senior state department officials, Rice is entranced by a new "domino theory": Israel's attacks will demolish Hizbullah; the Lebanese will blame Hizbullah and destroy its influence; and the backlash will extend to Hamas, which will collapse. From the administration's point of view, this is a proxy war with Iran (and Syria) that will inexplicably help turn around Iraq. "We will prevail," Rice says.
The administration has traditionally engaged in promiscuous threat conflation - al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein, North Korea and Iran in "the axis of evil", and now implicitly the Shia Hizbullah with the Sunni Iraqi insurgency. By asserting "we" before "will prevail", Rice is engaging in national interest conflation.
Continued
Her jaunt to the region is intended to lend the appearance of diplomacy in order to forestall it. As explained to me by several senior state department officials, Rice is entranced by a new "domino theory": Israel's attacks will demolish Hizbullah; the Lebanese will blame Hizbullah and destroy its influence; and the backlash will extend to Hamas, which will collapse. From the administration's point of view, this is a proxy war with Iran (and Syria) that will inexplicably help turn around Iraq. "We will prevail," Rice says.
The administration has traditionally engaged in promiscuous threat conflation - al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein, North Korea and Iran in "the axis of evil", and now implicitly the Shia Hizbullah with the Sunni Iraqi insurgency. By asserting "we" before "will prevail", Rice is engaging in national interest conflation.
Continued
Israeli army embarrassed by video broadcast
This video is actually from an incident that happened a few years back, I urge others to spread it around and to expose as many people possible to the inhumanity of the Israeli Occupation Forces.
Video Israel Doesn't Want You to See
Video Israel Doesn't Want You to See
Who's Arming Israel? By Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung
07/27/06
"Foreign Policy In Focus "
Much has been made in the US media of the Syrian- and Iranian-origin weaponry used by Hezbollah in the escalating violence in Israel and Lebanon. There has been no parallel discussion of the origin of Israel's weaponry, the vast bulk of which is from the United States.
The US is the primary source of Israel's far superior arsenal. For more than 30 years, Israel had been the largest recipient of US foreign assistance, and since 1985 Jerusalem has received aboutUS$3 billion in military and economic aid each year from Washington. US aid accounts for more than 20% of Israel's total defense budget.
Over the past decade, the US has transferred more than $17 billion in military aid to this country of just under 7 million people.
Israel is one of the United States' largest arms importers. Between 1996 and 2005 (the last year for which full data are available), Israel took delivery of $10.19 billion in US weaponry and military equipment, including more than $8.58 billion through the Foreign Military Sales Program, and another $1.61 billion in direct commercial sales.
During the administration of US President George W Bush, from 2001 to 2005, Israel received $10.5 billion in foreign military financing - the Pentagon's biggest military aid program - and $6.3 billion in US arms deliveries. The aid figure is larger than the arms-transfer figure because it includes financing for major arms agreements for which the equipment has yet to be fully delivered. The most prominent of these deals is a $4.5 billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel.
Given the billions of dollars of aid it provides to Israel every year and the central role of US-supplied weaponry in the Israeli arsenal, the US has considerable leverage that it could use to promote a ceasefire in the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah before more Israeli and Lebanese civilians are killed and displaced.
President Bush needs to go beyond vague calls for "restraint" to demands for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, bringing in other key actors in the region, including Iran and Syria.
William D Hartung is author of Tangled Web 2005: A Profile of the Missile Defense and Space Weapons Lobbies and a senior research fellow at the New School, where Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate. Both are Foreign Policy In Focus scholars. http://www.fpif.org/
********************************
Also see: Press Overlooks U.S. Role as Arms Merchant in Mideast Conflict
For better or worse, the U.S. has a special role in the current conflict as supplier of the best weapons money can buy to one side. Yet the media nearly always underplays this angle, even though it has enormous consequences, not just for those under fire in Lebanon but for Americans at home.
"Foreign Policy In Focus "
Much has been made in the US media of the Syrian- and Iranian-origin weaponry used by Hezbollah in the escalating violence in Israel and Lebanon. There has been no parallel discussion of the origin of Israel's weaponry, the vast bulk of which is from the United States.
The US is the primary source of Israel's far superior arsenal. For more than 30 years, Israel had been the largest recipient of US foreign assistance, and since 1985 Jerusalem has received aboutUS$3 billion in military and economic aid each year from Washington. US aid accounts for more than 20% of Israel's total defense budget.
Over the past decade, the US has transferred more than $17 billion in military aid to this country of just under 7 million people.
Israel is one of the United States' largest arms importers. Between 1996 and 2005 (the last year for which full data are available), Israel took delivery of $10.19 billion in US weaponry and military equipment, including more than $8.58 billion through the Foreign Military Sales Program, and another $1.61 billion in direct commercial sales.
During the administration of US President George W Bush, from 2001 to 2005, Israel received $10.5 billion in foreign military financing - the Pentagon's biggest military aid program - and $6.3 billion in US arms deliveries. The aid figure is larger than the arms-transfer figure because it includes financing for major arms agreements for which the equipment has yet to be fully delivered. The most prominent of these deals is a $4.5 billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel.
Given the billions of dollars of aid it provides to Israel every year and the central role of US-supplied weaponry in the Israeli arsenal, the US has considerable leverage that it could use to promote a ceasefire in the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah before more Israeli and Lebanese civilians are killed and displaced.
President Bush needs to go beyond vague calls for "restraint" to demands for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, bringing in other key actors in the region, including Iran and Syria.
William D Hartung is author of Tangled Web 2005: A Profile of the Missile Defense and Space Weapons Lobbies and a senior research fellow at the New School, where Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate. Both are Foreign Policy In Focus scholars. http://www.fpif.org/
********************************
Also see: Press Overlooks U.S. Role as Arms Merchant in Mideast Conflict
For better or worse, the U.S. has a special role in the current conflict as supplier of the best weapons money can buy to one side. Yet the media nearly always underplays this angle, even though it has enormous consequences, not just for those under fire in Lebanon but for Americans at home.
Cream of the Progressive American Crop
Here is the man that was labeled outrageously liberal by Republicans and Democrats alike when he ran against Bush...
"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah." --Howard Dean
Wow.
Do I really need to explain all the reasons why this is disgusting?
Only in the U.S. do the "progressive liberals" think that the U.S. spent hundreds of billions of dollars bringing democracy to Iraq. And only in the U.S. do the "progressive liberals" demand that their puppets not dare deviate from the American script of what they are supposed to say.
What a pathetic, pathetic bastard. I will NEVER vote for a Democrat again in my life, not even if Mother Theresa herself rose from the dead and decided to run as a Democrat.
********************************************
Time to vote GREEN people!
GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
For Immediate Release:Thursday, July 20, 2006
Contacts:Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@greens.org
Greens to Bush: Press Israel to stop the attacks on Lebanon. Slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians is a punishable war crime; use of U.S. weapons for such purposes violates U.S. laws
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party leaders called on President Bush to demand that Israel immediately cease its invasion of Lebanon and its rain of destruction on civilian populations and infrastructure in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.Greens urged President Bush to press for an immediate ceasefire. The Green Party has repeatedly called for negotiation, a halt to violence by both sides, and adherence to international law as the only means to achieve peace and security for all Israelis, Palestinians, and people in surrounding countries."The current U.S. reaction is a bipartisan disaster, with most Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress expressing unqualified support for Israel," said Rae Vogeler, Wisconsin Green candidate for the U.S. Senate. "While President Bush is busy rattling sabers at Iran and Syria and refusing to demand a ceasefire, hundreds of innocent Lebanese and Palestinian civilians are dying."
Greens based their demand on the following:
Israel's attacks violate Fourth Geneva Convention prohibitions against "collective punishment," i.e., the retaliatory killing of civilians, "targeted" assassinations, and destruction of the infrastructure of an occupied territory.
Israel's use of U.S.-made weapons violates U.S. laws against deploying such weapons for use against civilians.
The attacks cannot be justified as a response to the capture of an Israeli soldier who was in Gaza as part of the occupation force. (The current exchange of violence began with Israeli shellings that killed eight Palestinian civilians on a Gaza beach.) Israel itself is holding thousands of Palestinian civilians, including over 400 Palestinian children and 120 women, in inhumane conditions and has reportedly subjected some detainees to torture.
Israel and the U.S. have refused to recognize Hamas as the legitimate democratically elected government of the Palestinian territories; the current attacks are clearly meant to destroy Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to punish Palestinian civilians for having elected Hamas.
The current escalation of hostilities is a result of Israel's illegal occupation (with U.S. support) of Palestinian lands and daily brutality and killing visited on Palestinians, land grabs and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, cutoff of water and electricity, destruction of homes and businesses, economic strangulation, and conversion of the Palestinian territories into heavily guarded bantustans sealed off with a 'security' wall.
The Olmert government's current actions, especially deployment of troops into Lebanon, risk a greater regional conflict that will threaten global peace as other nations become involved in the conflict, and will also hinder efforts to effect U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Aside from the U.S. and Israel itself, most of the world understands the attacks as illegal Israeli military aggression.
Greens have repeatedly called for Israel to end the occupation and fully recognize the human rights of Palestinians, in accord with international law and U.N. directives, as necessary first steps for peace in the Middle East.In November, 2005, the Green Party endorsed a resolution calling for divestment and a general boycott of Israel until it complies with international law and realizes human rights for Palestinians, including those living within Israel's borders.
Greens have also endorsed the Palestinian Right of Return, consistent with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (nonbinding, passed December 11, 1948), which states that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date."
==> For Green campaign listings, news, photos, and web sites, visit the Green Party's candidate spotlight page www.gp.org/2006elections and the Green elections database www.greens.org/elections, which lists all 2006 candidates.
"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah." --Howard Dean
Wow.
Do I really need to explain all the reasons why this is disgusting?
Only in the U.S. do the "progressive liberals" think that the U.S. spent hundreds of billions of dollars bringing democracy to Iraq. And only in the U.S. do the "progressive liberals" demand that their puppets not dare deviate from the American script of what they are supposed to say.
What a pathetic, pathetic bastard. I will NEVER vote for a Democrat again in my life, not even if Mother Theresa herself rose from the dead and decided to run as a Democrat.
********************************************
Time to vote GREEN people!
GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
For Immediate Release:Thursday, July 20, 2006
Contacts:Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@greens.org
Greens to Bush: Press Israel to stop the attacks on Lebanon. Slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians is a punishable war crime; use of U.S. weapons for such purposes violates U.S. laws
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party leaders called on President Bush to demand that Israel immediately cease its invasion of Lebanon and its rain of destruction on civilian populations and infrastructure in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.Greens urged President Bush to press for an immediate ceasefire. The Green Party has repeatedly called for negotiation, a halt to violence by both sides, and adherence to international law as the only means to achieve peace and security for all Israelis, Palestinians, and people in surrounding countries."The current U.S. reaction is a bipartisan disaster, with most Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress expressing unqualified support for Israel," said Rae Vogeler, Wisconsin Green candidate for the U.S. Senate. "While President Bush is busy rattling sabers at Iran and Syria and refusing to demand a ceasefire, hundreds of innocent Lebanese and Palestinian civilians are dying."
Greens based their demand on the following:
Israel's attacks violate Fourth Geneva Convention prohibitions against "collective punishment," i.e., the retaliatory killing of civilians, "targeted" assassinations, and destruction of the infrastructure of an occupied territory.
Israel's use of U.S.-made weapons violates U.S. laws against deploying such weapons for use against civilians.
The attacks cannot be justified as a response to the capture of an Israeli soldier who was in Gaza as part of the occupation force. (The current exchange of violence began with Israeli shellings that killed eight Palestinian civilians on a Gaza beach.) Israel itself is holding thousands of Palestinian civilians, including over 400 Palestinian children and 120 women, in inhumane conditions and has reportedly subjected some detainees to torture.
Israel and the U.S. have refused to recognize Hamas as the legitimate democratically elected government of the Palestinian territories; the current attacks are clearly meant to destroy Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to punish Palestinian civilians for having elected Hamas.
The current escalation of hostilities is a result of Israel's illegal occupation (with U.S. support) of Palestinian lands and daily brutality and killing visited on Palestinians, land grabs and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, cutoff of water and electricity, destruction of homes and businesses, economic strangulation, and conversion of the Palestinian territories into heavily guarded bantustans sealed off with a 'security' wall.
The Olmert government's current actions, especially deployment of troops into Lebanon, risk a greater regional conflict that will threaten global peace as other nations become involved in the conflict, and will also hinder efforts to effect U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Aside from the U.S. and Israel itself, most of the world understands the attacks as illegal Israeli military aggression.
Greens have repeatedly called for Israel to end the occupation and fully recognize the human rights of Palestinians, in accord with international law and U.N. directives, as necessary first steps for peace in the Middle East.In November, 2005, the Green Party endorsed a resolution calling for divestment and a general boycott of Israel until it complies with international law and realizes human rights for Palestinians, including those living within Israel's borders.
Greens have also endorsed the Palestinian Right of Return, consistent with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (nonbinding, passed December 11, 1948), which states that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date."
==> For Green campaign listings, news, photos, and web sites, visit the Green Party's candidate spotlight page www.gp.org/2006elections and the Green elections database www.greens.org/elections, which lists all 2006 candidates.
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