Israel VS Palestine

[rockysigman]

I bet if you gave GWB a couple lines to snort ahead of time, and maybe a pint of Jack, he'd be just as crazy as Saddam.

[luke]

This is true.

Damn, I wish this would have went down. Even I might sport on of those "W: The President" bumper stickers if I saw him full of Jack and blow smashing Saddam's head into a rock in the Coliseum.

Alas, though, it's much more civilized to send thousands of people to their deaths and start major international conficts and civil wars throughout the entire region.

[Fuzznuts]

[post deleted]

[Paul]

interesting article about all this stuff....

www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/08/03/mideast/index_np.html

[Galactus]

Rumsfeld's a genius.

Are there still Taliban around? You bet. Are they occupying safe havens in Afghanistan and other places — correction, in Pakistan and other places? Certainly they are. Is the violence up? Yes. Does the violence tend to be up during the summer, in the spring, summer and fall months? Yes it does. And it tends to decline during the winter period. Does that represent failed policy? I don’t know. I would say not.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Yeah, it's just the Summertime Blues, man.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Israel responded to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah, right? Wrong
The assault on Lebanon was premeditated - the soldiers' capture simply provided the excuse. It was also unnecessary
by George Monbiot
August 07, 2006

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Whatever we think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the first shots". This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It's an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.

Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the "blue line" between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line "on an almost daily basis" between 2001 and 2003, and "persistently" until 2006. These incursions "caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas". On some occasions, Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.

In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation".

On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region "remained tense and volatile", Unifil says it was "generally quiet" until July 12.

There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon, but it now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel. This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have been found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab. Now it simply states that "the Islamic resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine". Three other Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also some dispute about when, on July 12, Hizbullah first fired its rockets; but Unifil makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time as the raid - 9am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No one was hit.

But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon and (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention) never released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners, it would - without the spillage of any more blood - have retrieved its men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli government refused to negotiate. Instead - well, we all know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.

On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail". The attack, he said, would last for three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared ... By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board".

A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out the organisation. The New Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by more than one official source that the US government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the British government.

Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim - also with justification - that it was trying to deter incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and disarmed. Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12 were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just about everything that has taken place around the border for the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or that it constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.

So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line - in particular the persistent flights across the border. Third, release the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to contend that this programme would have caused more death and destruction than the current adventure has done?

www.monbiot.com

[Mary]

I meant to post this a few days ago from the road but kept forgetting. Right before I left for Memphis I posted that I loathed Charles Krauthammer, which inspired Chrisfan to surmise he must be doing something right because he rendered me incapable of reasonable analysis. For what it's worth, I posted that immediately before leaving for Memphis and my life was completely hectic so I didn't necessarily have the time for a sustained analysis, but wanted to register my intense distaste for the Krauthammer article just posted. Anyway - while grabbing brunch in Waco (yes, that Waco!), I randomly bought the Waco paper out of curiosity, and they ran a syndicated column by Charles Krauthammer which I found so unbelievably disgusting and offensive that I could barely eat my pancakes. And I can always eat pecan pancakes. So of course I immediately had to find this column online, and I am posting it here because I am dying to know what some of Krauthammer's fans (for lack of a better word) think of this. I can, and will, post a lengthy critique of the article, and of all the jaw-droppingly offensive presumptions which underlie its astonishingly cynical argument, but I genuinely want to hear what others think first, particularly those who have enjoyed or agreed with Krauthammer's essays in the past. So here it is:

***

Israel's Lost Moment
Friday, August 4, 2006

Israel's war with Hezbollah is a war to secure its northern border, to defeat a terrorist militia bent on Israel's destruction, to restore Israeli deterrence in the age of the missile. But even more is at stake. Israel's leaders do not seem to understand how ruinous a military failure in Lebanon would be to its relationship with America, Israel's most vital lifeline.

For decades there has been a debate in the United States over Israel's strategic value. At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970 Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982 American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs in one week without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev).

But that was decades ago. The question, as always, is: What have you done for me lately? There is fierce debate in the United States about whether, in the post-Sept. 11 world, Israel is a net asset or liability. Hezbollah's unprovoked attack on July 12 provided Israel the extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate its utility by making a major contribution to America's war on terrorism.

America's green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel. But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light -- indeed, the encouragement -- is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat.

Unlike many of the other terrorist groups in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a serious enemy of the United States. In 1983 it massacred 241 American servicemen. Except for al-Qaeda, it has killed more Americans than any other terror organization.

More important, it is today the leading edge of an aggressive, nuclear-hungry Iran. Hezbollah is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary. Its mission is to extend the Islamic Revolution's influence into Lebanon and Palestine, destabilize any Arab-Israeli peace, and advance an Islamist Shiite ascendancy, led and controlled by Iran, throughout the Levant.

America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances and give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.

The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the United States to let Israel take down that organization. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but also against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.

Hence Israel's rare opportunity to demonstrate what it can do for its great American patron. The defeat of Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. Iran would lose its foothold in Lebanon. It would lose its major means to destabilize and inject itself into the heart of the Middle East. It would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish itself as the regional superpower.

The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive cabinet debates are broadcast to the world, as was Olmert's own complaint that "I'm tired. I didn't sleep at all last night" (Haaretz, July 28). Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence.

His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well. That confidence -- and the relationship it reinforces -- is as important to Israel's survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue.

***

M

[shin]

Perhaps Mary would appreciate it if I pasted the words of one M.J. Rosenberg, as it may free her future critique to be that much shorter :

Krauthammer is not alone in his anger at the Israeli PM for not fighting hard enough. Such other brave warriors as Newt Gingrich and Bill Kristol have also attacked Olmert for his reticence about sending Israeli soldiers into ground combat.

Lay aside, for the purposes of this argument, the destruction this war has delivered to Lebanon. Krauthammer has never in his career expressed a word of sympathy for an Arab, anywhere. He hates them all. For him, the only good part of this war is the damage done to Lebanon.

But here's the beauty part. Krauthammer doesn't care about the Jews either. He wants a ground war and if it kills 500 Israeli soldier boys, so be it. Can you imagine. Usually, you can count on Krauthammer to weigh in about Jewish losses at every opportunity. In fact, the mean-spirited Krauthammer only cares about Jews. Or so I thought.

Actually I should have known better. About three years ago, I saw Krauthammer flip out in synagogue on Yom Kippur. The rabbi had offered some timid endorsement of peace -- peace essentially on Israel's terms -- but peace anyway. Krauthammer went nuts. He actually started bellowing at the rabbi, from his wheel chair in the aisle. People tried to "shush" him. It was, after all, the holiest day of the year. But Krauthammer kept howling until the rabbi apologized. The man is as arrogant as he is thuggish. Who screams at the rabbi at services? For advocating peace?

So I was wrong about Krauthammer. He doesn't give a damn about Israel. Yes, he moved to the right on foreign policy because he thought that was good for Israel. He endorsed a hardline US foreign policy because he thought that was good for Israel.

But then, with advancing age, he forgot the original reason for becoming a hawk. He actually became an American rightwing (not Israeli rightwing) hawk who believes that Israel's purpose is to send its men to bleed and die in support of some sort of American global anti-Arab crusade.

The Iraq war is more important to him than Israel. And even more important than that is that we fight a war with Iran.

He wants Israel to be the first army in the field. When Olmert seems timid about sending 18 year old Israelis to fight for the Bush doctrine. Krauthamer and company are furious. How dare he defy NeoconInc.

Bottom line. Mearsheimer and Walt have it wrong. The neocons are not loyal to Israel.
They are not gulty of "dual loyalty."

Their only use for Israelis is as mercenaries.
And they care no more about the Israelis who will die in their imperial adventures than they care about the dead Americans who have.

Don't ever accuse Krauthammer, Kristol, Steve Rosen (of AIPAC) etc of "dual loyalty." Because, in fact, that is giving them credit for 200% more loyalty than they actually possess.

www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/aug/09/krauthammer_other_enemies_of_israel

[kmc]

Krauthammer is like that dude who ran against Chris Rock in "Head of State": "God bless America, and nobody else."

[chrisfan]

mary said:

Right before I left for Memphis I posted that I loathed Charles Krauthammer, which inspired Chrisfan to surmise he must be doing something right because he rendered me incapable of reasonable analysis. For what it's worth, I posted that immediately before leaving for Memphis and my life was completely hectic so I didn't necessarily have the time for a sustained analysis, but wanted to register my intense distaste for the Krauthammer article just posted.

Tongue in cheek comments should be taken in jest, and not personally.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

It's time for Jewish dissenters to challenge Israeli policies
by Henri Picciotto

August 12, 2006

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I grew up Jewish in Beirut. Although I left nearly 40 years ago, my memories of Lebanon -- vibrant and multicultural -- have stayed with me. And so, my wife and I had started talking about taking a trip there.

I would show her the neighborhood where I grew up, the beaches where I swam in the warm Mediterranean waters and the small mountain hotel we loved to stay at in the summer. I would also show her my school, where Jewish, Christian and Muslim children learned and grew together.

After the past few weeks, we may never be able to take this trip. Israeli bombings have killed more than 700 Lebanese civilians. Hundreds of thousands -- more than one-fifth of the population -- have become refugees, uprooted from their homes. Lebanon's civilian infrastructure has been systematically destroyed.

We, as Americans, bear a special responsibility for this carnage. If Washington would withhold its unconditional military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel, the Israeli government would waste no time in starting genuine negotiations. Current U.S.-backed cease-fire proposals are so unfair to Lebanon that the Lebanese government has already indicated it cannot accept the terms, which do not even include a full Israeli withdrawal.

This one-sided U.S. policy is the result of a combination of factors, but it thrives on the myth that all American Jews stand uncritically behind the Israeli government.

Many believe that American Jews unanimously and unconditionally support the Israeli government. That what we learned from the Holocaust is to shoot first and ask questions later. That our commitment to justice and equal rights is a quaint feature of our past.

There is a saying ``two Jews, three opinions.' Now we are told ``1 million Jews, one opinion.'

In fact, our community is profoundly divided:

• Hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews all over the country have demonstrated to demand an end to the bombing of Gaza and Lebanon. In one of these demonstrations, 17 Jewish protesters were arrested in an act of civil disobedience.

• In the past few days, thousands of Jews have signed a petition demanding that the United States intervene to stop the wanton killing of Lebanese civilians by the Israeli war machine.

• Jewish organizations that sponsor such demonstrations and petitions, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (on whose board I serve), are experiencing exponential growth. Jews are looking for ways to express their outrage at the actions of the Israeli government, and of the blind support accorded by the Jewish establishment in this country.

We are appalled by the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli cities, just as we were the earlier attacks by Israel on Lebanese cities. We mourn the loss of Israeli, Palestinian and Lebanese lives equally. We are outraged by the destruction of Lebanese airports, roads and bridges, the bombing of homes and private cars, the killing of children, and the other horrors visited by the Israelis on their neighbors.

It is this kind of past Israeli behavior that gave birth to both Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that have strengthened immeasurably in recent weeks. Israeli intransigence has made Israel a pariah state, and is the biggest enemy of all the people of the Middle East -- Arabs and Israelis alike.

Jewish American leaders work tirelessly to promote the myth of Jewish consensus. Their tactics include refusing to rent space to dissenters, threatening funding cuts when Jewish institutions question Israel's actions and canceling meetings when they suspect debate might occur. Their most ubiquitous weapon is the hurtful charge of anti-Semitism, hurled at both dissenting Jews and Gentiles.

Many Jews question Israel's policies, but are afraid to speak out in their congregations or even to their families. But the time has come for Jewish dissidents to challenge the policies of the Israeli government. In the short run these policies kill Arabs, mostly innocent civilians; in the long run, they can result only in disaster for Israelis and Jews worldwide. Our silence in this time of crisis is complicity. We need to help bring about the peace that would one day make my visit to Beirut -- and the visit of all Jews -- possible.


HENRI PICCIOTTO of Berkeley is a mathematics educator and chairman of the board of Jewish Voice for Peace (jewishvoiceforpeace.org). He wrote this article for the Mercury News.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

That is what I found to be a very good article and doesn't mean you are some sort of Anti-Semite for supporting Lebanon.

[kmc]

But all Arabs are Nazis. I read that on the Current Events thread.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

I don't know at alll what that is all about. I think Tuatha is fucking insane.