Very interesting interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today Program where Isaac Herzog, a member of Ehud Olmert's government, suggests that their (defining) policy of unilateral disengagement may be a mistake.
This would represent one huge "I told you so" for Daniel Pipes who has repeatedly critised the policy of unilateral withdrawal from both Lebanon and Gaza, and the links between the two.
I have blogged about this elsewhere, but one of my previous comments is worth re-posting, as the empirical evidence says unequivocally that Pipes was right:
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And a contrary view. Credit to Pipes, he makes a concrete, falsifiable prediction as to the consequences of Sharon's Gaza pullout, which we can keep an eye on to see if he is proved right or wrong.
"Today Gaza, Tomorrow Jerusalem"
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 9, 2005
Are Israel's critics correct? Does the "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza cause the Palestinian Arabs' anti-Semitism, their suicide factories, and their terrorism? And is it true these horrors will end only when Israeli civilians and troops leave the territories?
The answer is coming soon. Starting August 15, the Israeli government will evict about 8,000 Israelis from Gaza and turn their land over to the Palestinian Authority. In addition to being a unique event in modern history (no other democracy has forcibly uprooted thousands of its own citizens of one religion from their lawful homes), it also offers a rare, live, social-science experiment.
We stand at an interpretive divide. If Israel's critics are right, the Gaza withdrawal will improve Palestinian attitudes toward Israel, leading to an end of incitement and a steep drop in attempted violence, followed by a renewal of negotiations and a full settlement. Logic requires, after all, that if "occupation" is the problem, ending it, even partially, will lead to a solution.
But I forecast a very different outcome. Given that about 80% of Palestinian Arabs continue to reject Israel's very existence, signs of Israeli weakness, such as the forthcoming Gaza withdrawal, will instead inspire heightened Palestinian irredentism. Absorbing their new gift without gratitude, Palestinian Arabs will focus on those territories Israelis have not evacuated. (This is what happened after Israeli forces fled Lebanon.) The retreat will inspire not comity but a new rejectionist exhilaration, a greater frenzy of anti-Zionist anger, and a surge in anti-Israel violence.
Palestinian Arabs themselves are openly saying as much. A top Hamas figure in Gaza, Ahmed al-Bahar says "Israel has never been in such a state of retreat and weakness as it is today following more than four years of the intifada. Hamas's heroic attacks exposed the weakness and volatility of the impotent Zionist security establishment. The withdrawal marks the end of the Zionist dream and is a sign of the moral and psychological decline of the Jewish state. We believe that the resistance is the only way to pressure the Jews."
181 comments:
Hamas's real casualty is wishful thinking
New Republic Editorial
13/7/06
There are crises that complicate and crises that clarify. The crisis along Israel's southern and northern frontiers is of the latter sort. Hamas and Hezbollah, in accordance with their lunatic assumption that the worse, the better, crossed an internationally recognized border and killed and have taken hostage soldiers of the neighboring state whose existence they despise. The attacks were unprovoked, except by the attackers' view of the world. Israel has rightly chosen to regard these provocations very seriously, and so far it has earned the sympathy of decent observers everywhere.
What has been clarified by this round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, first and foremost, the character of Israel's adversaries. They are Islamist terrorists, and proud to be so. More ominously, they are Islamist terrorists come to power. Hamas is no longer only a movement; it is now also a government. In the months since Hamas was elected by the Palestinians to govern (or misgovern) them, the regime of Ismail Haniyeh and company has presided over the launching of hundreds of Qassam rockets into Israel, applauded a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv restaurant (it would have been hypocritical of them not to applaud it!), allowed an unprecedented escalation of the conflict with the firing of a souped-up rocket into Ashkelon--the first time such a strike has been made against a major Israeli city--and, of course, kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit. All of this, again, is the work of a government. When Hamas was elected, there was an eruption of assurances in the media that power will breed responsibility, that the drudgeries of governing will usurp the ecstasies of bombing, and so on. "Hamas?" the headline on the cover of The New York Review of Books asked hopefully. But the Hamas rulers of Palestine have made it plain that they see no contradiction between governing and bombing. Success at the ballot box has had no calming effect. It has merely conferred political legitimacy upon moral depravity.
Hezbollah, of course, is not a government, but it is a part of a government. Its freedom of action, its unreconstructed radicalism, its pervasive presence in Lebanese politics: All this brings to mind nasty memories of a few decades ago, so that it is not incorrect to say that, over the last 30 years, Lebanon has exchanged a PLO mini-state within its borders for a Hezbollah mini-state within its borders. When Shalit was kidnapped, Hamas cited the precedent of Hezbollah's kidnappings (and prisoner-exchanges) in the past, as if in exoneration of its own extortion. Hezbollah has always been Hamas's teacher in the great madrassa of anti-Israeli terrorism. Now the teacher has taken a cue from the student and taken its own Israeli hostages. Israel must now remind its adversaries that it was deadly in earnest when, decades ago, it proclaimed that it would tolerate no such aggression along its northern border.
There is also a larger strategic dimension to the Hamas-Hezbollah offensive. These provocations stink of Assad and Ahmadinejad. The Hamas action in Gaza appears to have been ordered by Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader who resides in Damascus--which is to say, it is also a piece of Syrian intrigue. Nor can anything of significance take place in Lebanon without the sanction of Damascus; and Hezbollah enjoys not only the toleration of Syria but also the time-honored support of Iran, which is also Syria's great ally in a region that may be otherwise turning in a better direction. Perhaps Meshal's responsibility for the Gaza attack will now allow Haniyeh to masquerade as a moderate. (The Washington Post this week published an op-ed by Haniyeh that was full of outrageous assertions. It seems that an election is all that stands between terrorism and punditry.)
It is also worth noting that the Hamas-Hezbollah aggression is aimed at damaging precisely those political forces in Israel--now represented by Ehud Olmert's government--that withdrew Israeli settlers from Gaza and is committed to withdrawing Israeli settlers (70,000 of them) from the West Bank. It was one of the great ironies of recent times that Olmert's party rose in Israel at the exact moment that Hamas rose in Palestine; but the irony has turned deadly. They, the Palestinians, really do want everything. And so they are about to learn, yet again, that, as long as they want everything, they will get nothing. This may satisfy the nihilists in charge, since nihilists live for nothing.
Israel's Unnecessary War
Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
July 18, 2006
The blame for the current fighting falls entirely on Israel's enemies, who deploy inhuman methods in the service of barbaric goals. While I wish the armed forces of Israel every success against the terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon and hope they inflict a maximum defeat on Hamas and Hezbollah while taking a minimum of casualties, erroneous Israeli decisions in the last 13 years have led to an unnecessary war.
For 45 years, 1948-93, Israel's strategic vision, tactical brilliance, technological innovation, and logistical cleverness won it a deterrence capability. A deep understanding of the country's predicament, complemented by money, will power, and dedication, enabled the Israeli state systematically to burnish its reputation for toughness.
The leadership focused on the enemy's mind and mood, adopting policies designed to degrade his morale, with the goal of inducing a sense of defeat, a realization that the Jewish state is permanent and cannot be undone. As a result, whoever attacked the State of Israel paid for that mistake with captured terrorists, dead soldiers, stalled economies, and toppled regimes.
By 1993, this record of success imbued Israelis with a sense of overconfidence. They concluded they had won, and ignored the inconvenient fact that Palestinian Arabs and other enemies had not given up their goal of eliminating Israel. Two emotions long held in check, fatigue and hubris, came flooding out. Deciding that they had had enough of war and could end the war on their own terms, Israelis experimented with such exotica as "the peace process" and "disengagement." They permitted their enemies to create a quasi-governmental structure (the "Palestinian Authority") and to amass hoards of armaments (Hezbollah's nearly 12,000 Katyusha rockets in southern Lebanon, according to the Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat). They shamelessly traded captured terrorists for hostages.
In this mishmash of appeasement and retreat, Israel's enemies rapidly lost their fears and came to see Israel as a paper tiger. Or, in the pungent phrasing of Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in 2000: "Israel, which has both nuclear power and the strongest air force in the region, is weaker than a spider's web." As I wrote in 2000, "their earlier fear of Israel has been replaced with a disdain that borders on contempt." As Israelis ignored the effect of their actions on enemies, they perversely seemed to confirm this disdain. As a result, Palestinian Arabs and others rediscovered their earlier enthusiasm to eliminate Israel.
To undo this damage of 13 years requires that Israel return to the slow, hard, expensive, frustrating, and boring work of deterrence. That means renouncing the foolish plans of compromise, the dreamy hopes for good will, the irresponsibility of releasing terrorists, the self-indulgence of weariness, and the idiocy of unilateral withdrawal.
Decades of hard work before 1993 won Israel the wary respect of its enemies. By contrast, episodic displays of muscle have no utility. Should Israel resume the business-as-usual of appeasement and retreat, the present fighting will turn out to be a summer squall, a futile lashing-out. By now, Israel's enemies know they need only hunker down for some days or weeks and things will go back to normal, with the Israeli left in obstructionist mode and the government soon proffering gifts, trucking with terrorists, and yet again in territorial retreat.
Deterrence cannot be reinstated in a week, through a raid, a blockade, or a round of war. It demands unwavering resolve, expressed over decades. For the current operations to achieve anything for Israel beyond emotional palliation, they must presage a profound change in orientation. They must prompt a major rethinking of Israeli foreign policy, a junking of the Oslo and disengagement paradigms in favor of a policy of deterrence leading to victory.
The pattern since 1993 has been consistent: Each disillusionment inspires an orgy of Israeli remorse and reconsideration, followed by a quiet return to appeasement and retreat. I fear that the Gaza and Lebanon operations are focused not on defeating the enemy but on winning the release of one or two soldiers – a strange war goal, one perhaps unprecedented in the history of warfare – suggesting that matters will soon enough revert to form.
In other words, the import of hostilities under way is not what has been destroyed in Lebanon nor what the U.N. Security Council resolves; it is what the Israeli public learns, or fails to learn.
Wondered when someone would notice this:
Israel's Arab citizens caught in a war they never wanted
Independent
18 July 2006
Hassan Nasrullah, the leader of Hizbollah, has spoken of having more "surprises"in store for Israel after the deluge of rockets which culminated in the killing of eight Israeli civilians in Haifa in a single attack on Sunday.
But few residents of northern Israel can have been as "surprised" as those in the Arab village of Majd el Krum when it was hit by a volley of six Katyushas.
"We never saw anything like this," said Inas Ayub, 25. "There was no warning and we never expected anything like it."
Mrs Ayub lives next door to the fortunately empty house her brother-in-law Mahmoud is building for his son, part of whose roof and top floor was blown away by a direct hit from a Hizbollah rocket. She described how she was sitting inside her house with her two sons, one-year-old Mohammed and Liaan, three, when "I heard a very loud explosion. It was very strong. I took my sons downstairs. I started to scream because I saw that all the windows were broken and the front yard was full of rubble. Then I fainted."
...
Aslan Hammoud, 18, returned home yesterday from hospital having had three pieces of shrapnel removed from his shoulder after being wounded by a Katyusha which landed across the road from his family's home and pet shop. Part of the rocket was still embedded in the car park opposite the house. His father Mahmoud, 43, explained that as one of the relatively few residents to have built his house with an official permit, the family does have a secure room in the basement, but none of the family had been in it when the Katyusha landed without warning.
Mr Sjeer, like Mrs Ayub, said he did not believe that Hizbollah distinguished between Jewish and Arab villages. "They don't ask for people's ID cards before firing," he said. But Mahmoud Hammoud was convinced there was a reason why there had so far been no repeat of the Katyusha attack here. "This is a Muslim town and that is why I believe they have stopped shooting in this direction."
Maybe. But yesterday a Katyusha landed on Abu Snen, an Arab village seven miles away.
As reported by the BBC, the British papers today are dominated by the "Exodus" from Lebanon. Indeed that word is writ large across the front cover of today's Sun
There's a certain irony in this story of the humanitarian Royal Navy steaming in to assist with an "exodus" of refugees, when the most famous role of the Royal Navy in that region was their anti-humanitarian action in 1947 against a ship called Exodus, turning back thousands of Jewish refugees and sending them back to the camps in Europe.
Hizbollah operates effectively unchallenged in southern Lebanon, because the Lebanese government has not the wherewithal to take it on, particularly given the funding provided to Hizbollah by Iran.
Hizbollah is part of the Lebanese government. Furthermore, the Lebanese PM has previously recognised Hiz's right to 'resistance'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5195128.stm
Israel's response - wholescale bombing of Lebanon - has further weakened the prospect of Lebanese governance, destroying infrastructure and crippling the country still further, as well as driving out westerners and any prospect of foreing inward investment.
Not sure Israel's bombing can be described as 'wholescale'. The reports I'm reading suggest it is very much targetted at Hiz strongholds and has been accompanied by leafleting warning people to evacuate said Hiz strongholds.
This is not a wholesale refutation of Wemb's point, just a small corrective to what I felt were a couple of inaccuracies. I too find the situation tragic. I'm not convinced however that more 'restraint' would have led to an outpouring of love for Israel. Nor do I see much difference between Israel being hated and Israel being really hated. As Pipes argues at the beginning of this thread a perception of Israeli 'weakness' tends to lead to more, not less violence. GW said it best when he said 'what they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over.' At the time of writing it's not entirely clear who 'they' might be. (Some suggest they might be the Russians.)
On a separate but not entirely unrelated topic, did anyone spot this?
British anger at terror celebration
The commemoration of Israeli bombings that killing 92 people has caused offence
I'm not saying that a bomb in a building used as military headquarters (with an evacuation warning) is the same as, say, a bomb in a civillian area, but it certainly seems to illustrate the adage that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'. If you watch the skies you can already see relatavists flying in lazy circles over head.
So what *would* be "proportionate"?
Note that for Israel to accept any such alternative proposal, it must be both "proportionate" AND guaranteed to stop future Hezbollah attacks (Hezbollah being a group created, funded and to a large extent controlled by Iran, a country dedicated to the cause of Israel's destruction).
Iran Provider of Hezbollah's Weaponry
Asharq Al-Awsat
16/07/2006
According to a source close to a high-ranking official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Teheran has supplied Hezbollah with approximately 11,500 missiles and projectiles. The source said more than 3,000 Hezbollah members have undergone training in Iran, which included guerilla warfare, firing missiles and artillery, operating unmanned drones, marine warfare and conventional war operations. He said they have also trained 50 pilots for the past two years. According to the source, Hezbollah currently possesses four types of surface-to-surface missiles, some of which extend to a distance of 150 kilometers.
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Israel Has a War to Win
by Daniel Pipes
Los Angeles Times
July 20, 2006
A leading Israeli philosopher some years back referred to his countrymen as "an exhausted people, confused and without direction." Before he became prime minister, Ehud Olmert publicly declared these extraordinary words: "We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies." In that demoralized spirit, the state of Israel retreated twice in five years under fire, from Lebanon and from Gaza — and now, as a consequence, is fighting wars in precisely those places.
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Still waiting to hear what would count as a proportionate response. Perhaps, as Robert Fisk seems to imply, they should try and achieve a 1:1 civilian kill ratio?
So the Hezbollah kidnap operation was more than a month in the planning, and Iranian Revolutionary Guards fired the missile that hit the Israeli ship. The Lebanese PM is now agreeing with Israel in seeking the disarming of Hezbollah, who make calculated use of human shields. Meanwhile Iran, which is collaborating with North Korea's missile program, is 5 years from having the bomb. To me, the conclusion is clear. Israel is being "disproportionate" and must be denounced, as as Clare Short says, for war crimes!
Meanwhile, Iran gets on with its bomb
By Con Coughlin
Telegraph
21/07/2006
The UN Security Council should this week be discussing how to punish Iran for refusing to halt its uranium-enrichment programme. Instead, the world's leading powers are trying to bring a halt to the escalating violence in Israel and Lebanon, and Iran's nuclear programme has fallen off the international agenda.
It would be an understatement to say the mullahs in Teheran are delighted by this. But then, for them at least, it was hardly unexpected. Ever since Iranian exiles revealed the existence of the radical Islamic regime's top-secret uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz three years ago, Teheran has used every conceivable tactic to impede international attempts to halt its attempts to acquire an indigenous nuclear capability, which the West's intelligence community is convinced will ultimately result in an Iranian atom bomb.
The work of the inspectors dispatched by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to examine the Iranian programme was obstructed at every turn. Even Iran's offer to suspend its enrichment activities proved to be bogus. IAEA officials now privately concede that Iranian scientists took advantage of the year-long suspension to refine their enrichment techniques, so they were able to make rapid progress when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unilaterally resumed the programme earlier this year.
Iran's duplicity so sorely tested the patience of Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, that he concluded the issue should be resolved by the Security Council. That was supposed to happen in New York this week after Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, walked away last week from an EU offer to help Teheran with the development of a nuclear power industry.
But just as world leaders were steeling themselves to confront the threat that Iran's nuclear programme poses to international security (the subject was also due for discussion at last weekend's G8 summit in St Petersburg), two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hizbollah, Iran's proxy militia in southern Lebanon, thereby lighting the current conflagration.
Just how much responsibility Teheran bears for initiating hostilities remains unclear, but certain facts are now emerging that indicate the timing of the Israeli soldiers' abduction was no coincidence. To start with, there is the visit Mr Larijani paid to Damascus last week after his discussions in Brussels with Javier Solana, the EU's foreign affairs representative, ended without agreement. Apart from fulfilling his duties as chief nuclear negotiator, Mr Larijani, a former Revolutionary Guards commander, is chairman of Iran's national security council and a close confidant of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spiritual guardian of the Islamic revolution and the driving force behind the attempts to acquire a nuclear weapons arsenal.
During his stay in the Syrian capital, Mr Larijani briefed Syrian intelligence officers about the nuclear talks and the latest developments in Iran's mutual defence co-operation with Damascus. Mr Larijani then met senior Hizbollah representatives.
The following day, Hizbollah launched its operation against Israel's northern border, kidnapping two soldiers and killing eight others. The operation had been more than a month in the planning, and Teheran dispatched a team of 20 Iranian Guard commanders to southern Lebanon in mid-June to oversee the preparations. There were also shipments of military equipment, including surface-to-surface and anti-ship missiles: the Iranians were well aware that Israel would not tolerate an attack on its northern border with impunity.
Apart from helping Hizbollah to carry out the initial attack, the Revolutionary Guard contingent has remained in Lebanon to operate the sophisticated Iranian-made weapons systems that are being used against Israeli military and civilian targets. They have worked with Hizbollah to direct the missile barrages that have caused havoc in the northern Israeli port of Haifa, and Revolutionary Guards fired the Chinese-made Noor anti-ship missile that hit an Israeli warship, killing four sailors.
Whatever Iran's motives for starting this conflict, the events of the past week have not all been to Teheran's advantage. A robust response from Israel was to be expected, but not even the Iranians could have predicted the ferocity of the Israeli counter-attack, directed as much against Lebanon as against Hizbollah. One consequence of Israel's destruction of much of Lebanon's newly built infrastructure is that Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, now seeks the same ultimate resolution of the conflict as Israel - the disarming of Hizbollah.
The Iranians will also have been surprised by the failure of the world's major powers to intervene. While there has been much criticism of Israel's "disproportionate" response, none of the leading powers feels inclined to act in any way that might be to Hizbollah's benefit. This is particularly true in America, where the Bush Administration has made it plain it is in no hurry to get involved, so long as the conflict is confined to its current parameters. The White House is well aware of Iran's sponsorship of Hizbollah, and has in effect given Jerusalem a free hand to do whatever it believes is necessary to destroy Hizbollah's effectiveness.
The eradication of Iran's most important foreign ally would be a serious blow for the ayatollahs, and was clearly not one they took into their calculations when they precipitated this crisis. But even if Teheran has overplayed its hand in southern Lebanon, Iran's leaders will console themselves that it is a sacrifice worth paying for the maintenance of its all-important uranium-enrichment programme.
As even Dr Hans Blix, the dovish former UN weapons inspector, conceded this week, if Iran's programme continues at its current rate of progress, Teheran will have an atom bomb within five years.
The War in Lebanon is a limited, local conflict.
By Shmuel Rosner
Posted Friday, July 21, 2006, at 12:32 PM ET
Slate
As the bombs keep pounding Beirut, and Israeli soldiers take on the dangerous job of entering enemy territory on foot, and foreign citizens—Americans included—keep leaving the area, it's time for the world to calm down.
Yes, war is a terrible thing, but this one—contrary to the grandiose prognostications of Armageddon-obsessed pundits—will not bring about World War III or the end of the West or the defeat of extremist Islamism. It is now clear that the war in Lebanon is a limited, contained war, with modest goals and rational expectations. The war that has just started between Ethiopia and Somalia could be more vicious and could exact a greater toll of human lives, but it will probably get scant attention.'
Regarding Robert Fisk, back in 2003 he wrote this about Hizbollah missiles:
'Take the article in The New York Times by Larry Collins – joint author with Dominique Lapierre of O Jerusalem! – which last month announced that the Syrian-supported Hizbollah resistance in Lebanon had 10,000 missiles that could fly to Tel Aviv and "leave in their wake devastation more terrible than anything Israel has ever known". The missiles are a myth – I travel the roads of southern Lebanon every two weeks and there are no such missiles, as the UN force there will confirm [..].
D'oh!
(tip Bishop Hill)
Excellent article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. It makes some interesting comparisons between the current war in Lebanon and the last one. It also suggests that contrary to Con Coughlin's article in the Telegraph this war might turn out to have been a strategic blunder by both Hezbollah AND Iran.
What will happen next?
Incredibly, Nasrallah is making the same mistakes as Nasser. By puffing himself up, he isn't deterring Israel; at this point, he's only making himself and his movement a bigger and more legitimate target. Hezbollah has become a prisoner of its own myth, which is that at any moment it can go one-on-one against Israel - and win. It can't, and now is the best opportunity to prove it - to Lebanese Shiites, to all Lebanese and to the rest of the Arab-Muslim world.
[...]
"Any number of developments could threaten this scenario. It's not so much what Hezbollah might do, as what mistakes Israel might make. The most obvious pitfalls are too much 'collateral damage' or a reoccupation of part of Lebanon. Either could drain Israel legitimacy, sap American support and leave Israel isolated. Since this is a new government headed by a new prime minister, it's impossible to predict whether they will know how to handle the unexpected twists that are inevitable in war."
[...]
"Of course, no one faction in Lebanon is in a position to disarm Hezbollah, and neither is the government. Only Shiite opinion can achieve this. So it is up to Israel to demolish Hezbollah's argument that its arms deter Israel. Israel must demonstrate the opposite: that Hezbollah's arms invite Israeli attack, especially against Shiites. Only if the Shiites themselves realize this, and only if they become the main source of criticism of Hezbollah's strategy, will Hezbollah feel compelled to modify it. This will not happen overnight; it could take months or years.
(tip Samizdata)
My god, some people are such pricks:
Meanwhile one of Tony Blair's former foreign policy advisers has criticised the prime minister's approach to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. "There are times, such as the past two weeks, when a British prime minister should have been thinking less about private influence and more about public advocacy," Sir Stephen Wall wrote in the New Statesman. "Could the Prime Minister really not speak up for the simple proposition that the slaughter of innocent people in Lebanon, and the destruction of their country and the ruin of half a million lives, were wrong and should stop immediately?"
Yes, the Israelis have caused civilian casualties - 423 at the last count, but as I have blogged before, the blame lies firmly with Hezbollah, who wished this whole situation and use (uncondemned, as far as I have seen) human shields:
The BBC Jim Muir in Tyre says that the progress of Israeli ground troops has not been as fast as expected as they battle through the difficult terrain of southern Lebanon. Cpt Doron Spielman told BBC News the battle at Bint Jbeil was being fought at close range and accused Hezbollah of using the civilian population as human shields. Hezbollah blockaded the city before the battle began, and we now know at gunpoint forced the Lebanese residents to stay inside the city," Cpt Spielman said. "We are engaged in a very close combat urban battle - but there are Lebanese civilians trapped inside the city which makes our progress very difficult. We are trying of course to take care of the terrorists while preserving civilian life."
Is there any other country in the world that tries harder to reduce opposition human casualties than Israel? I mean, look at the lengths they are going to: the Israelis also are using more unorthodox methods of conveying their warning — SMS text messages and recorded voice messages to local officials. I saw this reported on the front cover of a tabloid the other day with some headline about "the SMS of death". For Christ's sake, the purpose of the SMS is to stop death, it's an extraordinary humanitarian gesture in a time of war.
In fact, my suspicion is that, as at Jenin, the Israelis are using tactics that sacrifice their own soldiers' lives to protect enemy civilians. 400+ deaths in 2 weeks of bombing is an extremely low count. Can you imagine how many they could cause if, like Hezbollah, civilian casualties were actually their *goal*?
Perhaps the Israelis should fight more like the Russians, or the Syrians. The latter is doubly pertinent, since the Syrians are in this whole affair up to their eyeballs, and Hama was an attack on the Hezbollah-alikes, the Muslim Brotherhood:
First Chechen War
When the Russians attacked the Chechen capital of Grozny during the first weeks of January 1995, about 25,000 civilians died under a week-long air-raid and artillery fire in the sealed-off city.
Syrian massacre at Hama
The Hama massacre occurred when the government of Syria attacked the town of Hama and killed thousands of people on February 2, 1982. Amnesty International claims that 10,000-25,000 were killed at Hama, though many figures exist and the number could be considerably smaller or larger than this. The Syrian government had made no official claim about the number killed at Hama.
As Pipes says at the end of the article (click on link), don't expect this to last:
Arabs Disavow Hizbullah
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
July 26, 2006
...
It began on July 13 with a startling Saudi statement condemning "rash adventures" that created "a gravely dangerous situation." Revealingly, Riyadh complained about Arab countries being exposed to destruction "with those countries having no say." The kingdom concluded that "these elements alone bear the full responsibility of these irresponsible acts and should alone shoulder the burden of ending the crisis they have created." George W. Bush's spokesman, Tony Snow, a day later described the president as "pleased" by the statement.
On July 15, the Saudis and several other Arab states at an emergency Arab League meeting condemned Hizbullah by name for its "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts." On July 17, Jordan's King Abdullah warned against "adventures that do not serve Arab interests."
A number of commentators began to take up the same argument, most notably Ahmed Al-Jarallah, editor-in-chief of Kuwait's Arab Times, author of one of the most remarkable sentences ever published in an Arab newspaper: "The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community." Interviewed on Dream2 television, Khaled Salah, an Egyptian journalist, condemned Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah: "Arab blood and the blood of Lebanese children is much more precious than raising [Hizbullah's] yellow flags and pictures of [Iran's Supreme Leader] Khamene'i."
A leading Wahhabi figure in Saudi Arabia even declared it unlawful for Sunni Muslims to support, supplicate for, or join Hizbullah. No major Arab oil-exporting state appears to have any intention of withholding its oil or gas exports out of solidarity with Hizbullah.
Many Lebanese expressed satisfaction that the arrogant and reckless Hizbullah organization was under assault. One Lebanese politician privately confided to Michael Young of Beirut's Daily Star that "Israel must not stop now … for things to get better in Lebanon, Nasrallah must be weakened further." The prime minister, Fuad Saniora, was quoted complaining about Hizbullah having become "a state within a state." A BBC report quoted a resident of the Lebanese Christian town of Bikfaya estimating that 95 percent of the town's population was furious at Hizbullah.
The Palestinian Legislative Council expressed its dismay at these muted Arab reactions, while a women's group burned flags of Arab countries on Gaza's streets. Nasrallah complained that "Some Arabs encouraged Israel to continue fighting" and blamed them for extending the war's duration.
...
Essential, essential listening:
BBC Radio 4
Today Program
27/06/06
0845 Fighting in the Middle East is fierce near the border of Lebanon and Israel.
Jim Naughtie interviews Dr Hazem Farouk Mansour* (spelling?), a Muslim Brotherhood MP in Egypt. For once (Allah be praised) an Islamist is asked a pertinent question, and the interviewer (praise him again!!) insists on getting an answer.
The question is whether the MB guy accepts the right of Israel to exist, or whether he would prefer it to be "obliterated". Now his answer is, to anyone who knows anything about Islamism, entirely unsurprising (I'll leave you to guess what it is).
The truly astonishing thing is how surprised Naughtie seems to be. Maybe he should practise asking these kinds of questions more often.
"That could not be clearer", concludes Jim, shock in his voice.
Listen (the part of the interview from 5'32'' to the end)
* presumably the guy quoted here, couldn't find out a lot about him.
Permalink
Just seen an interesting piece on the BBC's Newsnight prog about the death of the 4 UN Monitors in Lebanon.
The Canadian monitor who was killed sent this report:
"What I can tell you is this: we have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both artillery and aerial bombing," he wrote. ... "This has not been deliberate targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity."
The interpretation given on Newsnight of this phrase "due to tactical necessity" was that Hezbollah forces were using the UN Post as yet another human shield, and the Israelis were trying to nail them, hitting the UN Post in the process.
Another view was given by some old codger, a Kiwi judging by his accent, who had also been a UN observer in his time. In his view the Israeli attack was unquestionably deliberate, and he explained this as follows: the UN Post overlooks an obvious area for Israeli forces to build up in and attack Hezbollah positions from. Now apparently the UN position would have broadcast all its observations in clear (ie uncoded), and its channels would have been monitored by both Israel and Hezbollah. Hence in his view the Israelis took out the position in order to be able to use the area for military activities without the UN giving all their activity away.
No idea how plausible this is, but interesting nonetheless.
-----------------------------
On a separate note, (unsurprising) confirmation that Hezbollah firmly share the Muslim Brotherhood's view of the right of Israel to exist:
‘We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you’, said the former leader of Hezbollah, Hussein Massawi. And on October 22, 2002, Hassan Nasrallah told Lebanon’s Daily Star, ‘If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them world wide.’
Superb article, the best background to Hezbollah's creation and current dominance in Lebanon that I've read so far. Astonishing stuff.
God's army has plans to run the whole Middle East
The Sunday Times
July 23, 2006
Amir Taheri
Hezbollah, the group at the heart of the Lebanese conflict, is the spearhead of Iran’s ambitions to be a superpower, says Iranian commentator Amir Taheri
---------
Mahmoud Komati, the deputy chief of the Hezbollah politburo, suggested the group had miscalculated Israel's response to its cross-border raids. "The truth is - let me say this clearly - we didn't even expect [this] response ... that [Israel] would exploit this operation for this big war against us," said Mr Komati.
---------
A Lebanese Shia explains how Hezbollah uses human shields
Tageszeitung Letters
30 July 2006
In a letter to the editor of the Berlin left-wing daily Die Tageszeitung (TAZ) a Lebanese Shia explains how after Israel’s withdrawal from South Lebanon, Hezbollah stored rockets in bunkers in his town and built a school and residence over it.
I lived until 2002 in a small southern village near Mardshajund that is inhabited by a majority of Shias like me. After Israel left Lebanon, it did not take long for Hezbollah to take have its say in other towns. Received as successful resistance fighters and armed to the teeth, they stored rockets in bunkers in our town as well. The social work of the Party of God consisted in building a school and a residence over these bunkers! A local sheikh explained to me laughing that the Jews would lose in any event because the rockets would either be fired at them or if they attacked the rockets depots, they would be condemned by world opinion on account of the dead civilians. These people do not care about the Lebanese population, they use them as shields, and, once dead, as propaganda. As long as they continue existing there, there will be no tranquility and peace.
Dr. Mounir Herzallah
Berlin-Wedding
---------
Lebanon is the sideshow to Iran's sinister moves on Iraq
Andrew Sullivan
Sunday Times
30/07/06
---------
We can't bear pictures of the dead. Hezbollah want to see nothing else
David Aarnonovitich
Times Comment
01/08/06
[W]hen the Israelis miss their targets they hit civilians and when Hezbollah misses, they don’t.
...
Had you been watching the evening drama on al-Manar [Hezbollah stellite TV] recently you could have seen a Syrian drama series on the Jewish plot to take over the world. One scene was set in a brothel where a Jewish prostitute thinks she is dying from some disease. “I implore you,” she tells the Madam, “send me only Christian clients. I don’t want any Jew to be infected by me.” It’s The Forsyte Saga as scripted by Heinrich Himmler.
...
Nasrallah believes that the Jews “invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities”. That Israel “is a cancerous body in the region” that “must be uprooted”.
Competition time! A bit like the World Cup's Golden Boot, only in this instance the boot should be up someone's arse.
It's a competitive category, but the search is on to find...
MID-EAST CONFLICT'S STUPIDEST PUNDIT!!!
My nominee is fashion designer, Bella Freud and she's going to take some beating.
On last night's Newsnight Ms Freud was taking part in a discussion with Paxo, Julia Pascal and Alain de Boton. AdB made the not unresasonable point that Hezbollah are committed to the destruction of jews in general and Israel in particular. As evidence AdB cited Hez's own website, to which BF responded 'why look at their website? It's a complete waste of time.' AdB said that peace settlements ususally involve everyone involved sitting down for talks and that this would be a tad tricky if one side was committed to the complete destruction of the other, and as such it was worth having a look at what they were saying. The fragrant Ms F countered with 'But we shouldn't be talking to Hezbollah. We should be talking to the people who can stop this.' The other panellists enquired if by this she meant Syria or Iran. If you guessed that she absolutely did NOT mean the state sponsors of Hez and Hamas, give yourself a gold star. BF's solution to the whole sorry mess - everybody should just 'get together'. Presumably while wearing one of the delightful 'love' sweaters from her Kingston Dream collection. (No hyperlink - she's not worth the html code.)
So, the game has begun. Bella Freud. Nominated for dumbest out-of-arse talking fuckwit I have ever seen.
As they say in the letters page of The Sun, can anyone top that?
Hold Damascus Responsible
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 1, 2006
"There will be an international force [in Lebanon], because all the key players want it," an American official asserted recently. He appears to be right, as even the Israeli government has embraced the plan, announcing it "would agree to consider stationing a battle-tested force composed of soldiers from European Union member states." The key players might "want it," but such a force will certainly fail, just as it did once before, in 1982-84.
That was when American, French, and Italian troops were deployed in Lebanon to buffer Israel from Lebanon's anarchy and terrorism. The "Multinational Force" collapsed back then when Hezbollah attacked MNF soldiers, embassies, and other installations, prompting the MNF's ignominious flight from Lebanon. The same pattern will no doubt recur. Back then, Americans and others did not regard Hezbollah as their enemy, and this remains the case today, notwithstanding the war on terror; in a recent Gallup poll, 65% of Americans said their government should not take sides in the current Israel-Hezbollah fighting.
Other, equally bad, ideas to end the anarchy in south Lebanon include:
* Deploying the Lebanese Armed Forces, the Lebanese state's official military. Hezbollah is within the government of Lebanon and would veto the LAF controlling the south. Also, Shiites sympathetic to Hezbollah make up half of the LAF. Finally, the LAF is too amateurish to confront Hezbollah.
* Deploying Syrian forces. Lebanese and Israelis both reject a Syrian occupation of south Lebanon.
* Deploying Israeli forces. After their experiences occupying Arab-majority lands in 1967 and 1982, Israelis have widely decided against a repetition.
Rather than travel down the road of predictable failure, something quite different needs to be tried. My suggestion? Shift attention to Syria from Lebanon and put Damascus on notice that it is responsible for Hezbollah violence. (Incidentally, this is in keeping with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1680, adopted May 17, 2006, calling on Syria to undertake "measures against movements of arms into Lebanese territory.")
Here's why: Israeli leaders have long failed to prevent attacks emanating from Lebanon. They stanched cross-border terrorism with other neighbors by making it too painful for their central governments to permit such attacks to continue. But when they made demands of the Lebanese government, they failed to get satisfaction. In Lebanon – unlike in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria – no strong central government enjoys a monopoly of force. Lebanon's state is permanently weak because its population directs its primary loyalties to one or another of the country's 18 religious-ethnic communities. As a result, militias, guerrillas, and terrorists wield more power than the government.
Israeli governments responded with an array of strategies over the past 40 years. In 1968, Israeli jets pounded Beirut's airport, to no effect. In the 1978 Litani operation, Israeli forces first entered Lebanon on a large scale, without success. In 1982, they seized a major part of the country, which proved untenable. Until 2000, they retained a security zone, but that ended in a sudden unilateral retreat. Evacuating every inch of Lebanese territory in 2000 also failed to prevent attacks.
At this point, the government of Bashar al-Assad should be told immediately to cease provisioning Hezbollah, and that future violence from south Lebanon will meet with what the Wall Street Journal calls an "offer that Syria cannot refuse" – meaning military reprisal. As David Bedein explains in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, "for every target hit by Syria's proxy, Israel will single out Syrian targets for attack." Such targets could include the terrorist, military, and governmental infrastructures.
This approach will work because Hezbollah's stature, strength, and skills depend on Syrian support, both direct and indirect. Given that Syrian territory is the only route by which Iranian aid reaches Hezbollah, focusing on Damascus has the major side benefit of restricting Iranian influence in the Levant.
This plan has its drawbacks and complications – the recent Syrian-Iranian mutual defense treaty, or its giving Hezbollah the option to drag Syria into war – but it has a better chance of success, I believe, than any alternative.
Recalling how a similar approach worked in 1998, when the Turkish government successfully pressured Damascus to stop hosting a terrorist leader, the Israeli strategist Efraim Inbar rightly suggests "the time has come to speak Turkish to the Syrians."
There is an interesting debate raging across the blogosphere over whether the Western media is being spun by Hezbollah.
The EU Referendum Blog believes they are and questions the veracity of some of the photographs that have appeared in the press. Read their side of the story here.
The Guardian (who used the photographs in question) on the other hand angrily reject the suggestion which they feel is offensive. Read their response here.
Very interesting, Andy. Came across the following while browsing off your EU Referendum find.
Stage-Managed Massacre
FrontPage magazine.com
Robert Spencer
August 2, 2006
[I]t is increasingly clear that the Qana “massacre” was a stage-managed Hizballah production, designed precisely to enflame international sentiment against Israel and compel the Israelis to accept a ceasefire that would enable the jihad terrorist group to gain some time to recover from the Israeli attacks. Some of the principal evidence for this:
* The Israeli bombardment took place about midnight, but the house where the civilians were gathered reportedly did not collapse until 8AM. Said Brigadier General Amir Eshel of the Israeli Air Force, “It is difficult for me to believe that they waited eight hours to evacuate it.” Indeed, it strains credulity that not only did these Lebanese civilians remain in a house that had been bombed for eight hours, but peacefully went to sleep in it after the bombing – since the victims were all apparently sleeping, despite continuing Israeli air bombardment in the area, when the building collapsed. Eshel suggested that “it could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there” – in other words, Hizballah bombs and/or weapons.
* Photos of the rescue operation, which were transmitted all over the world and appeared on the front page of the New York Times and other major newspapers, are extremely suspicious. The blog EU Referendum has done important work scrutinizing the photos, finding numerous anomalies. Most notably, the dating of the various photos suggests that the same bodies were paraded before reporters on different occasions, each time as if they had just been pulled from the rubble. In a rebuttal to this charge, AP’s David Bauder rather lamely asserts: “web sites can use such stamps to show when pictures are posted, not taken.” Responds Richard North of EU Referendum: “Note, however, the use of the word ‘can’. He does not say that the ‘date stamps’ are wrong.” EU Referendum has also uncovered strange anomalies in the photos themselves: some workers are wearing different gear in different photos, yet clearly carrying the same corpse. Richard North comments about one of these workers: “It stretches belief to breaking point to argue that, on his way to the ambulance, he took off his helmet, his fluorescent waistcoat and his flack jacket just in order to pose for the cameras putting the body in the wagon – especially as we have the body being placed on the ‘guerney’ – which means the scenes are totally inconsistent.”
* The very existence of these pictures raises more questions. As Israel Insider puts it: “While Hezbollah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.”
* The Christian Lebanese website LIBANOSCOPIE has charged that Hizballah staged the entire incident in order to stimulate calls for a ceasefire, thereby staving off its destruction by Israel and Lebanese plans to rid themselves of this terrorist plague: “We have it from a credible source that Hizbullah, alarmed by Siniora’s plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations. Knowing full well that Israel will not hesitate to bombard civilian targets, Hizbullah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the negotiation initiative.”
* According to the German scholar Matthias Küntzel, “the Berlin daily the Tagesspiegel published a letter-to-the-editor from Dr. Mounir Herzallah, a Shiite from the South of Lebanon. Dr. Herzallah reports on how Hezbollah-terrorists came to his town, dug a munitions depot and then built a school and a residence directly over it. He writes: ‘Laughing, a local sheikh explained to me that the Jews lose either way: either because the rockets are fired at them or because, if they attack munitions depot, they are condemned by world public opinion on account of the dead civilians.’ Hezbollah, he says, uses the civilian population ‘as a human shield and then when they are dead as propaganda.’”
Tom Gross comments on the international media bias in this article from the National Review.
(via Samizdata)
Here is a blogger reporting on life in Lebanon. He reports that the Lebanese community are far from united behind Hezbollah.
...
'My sources and friends in Beirut tell me most
Lebanese are going easy on Hezbollah as much
as they can while the bombs are still falling. But
a terrible reckoning awaits them once this is
over.
Some Lebanese can’t wait even that long.
Here a Christian mob smashes a car in Beirut for
displaying a Hezbollah logo. My friend Carine
says the atomosphere reeks of impending
sectarian conflict like never before. Another
Lebanese blogger quotes a radical Christian war
criminal from the bad old days who says the civil
war will resume a month after Israel cools its
guns: "Christians, Sunnis and Druze will fight the
'fucker Shia', with arms from the US and
France."
I thought this section from the Tom Gross article above was worth quoting:
'CNN senior international correspondent Nic Robertson admitted that his anti-Israel report from Beirut on July 18 about civilian casualties in Lebanon was stage-managed from start to finish by Hezbollah. He revealed that his story was heavily influenced by Hezbollah’s “press officer” and that Hezbollah have “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations.”
When pressed a few days later about his reporting on the CNN program Reliable Sources, Robertson acknowledged that Hezbollah militants had instructed the CNN camera team where and what to film. Hezbollah “had control of the situation,” Robertson said. “They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn’t have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath.”
Robertson added that Hezbollah has “very, very good control over its areas in the south of Beirut. They deny journalists access into those areas. You don’t get in there without their permission. We didn’t have enough time to see if perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a Hezbollah fighter by night.”
Yet Reliable Sources, hosted by Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, is broadcast only on the American version of CNN. So CNN International viewers around the world will not have had the opportunity to learn from CNN’s “Senior international correspondent” that the pictures they saw from Beirut were carefully selected for them by Hezbollah.'
I think the blogger at samizdata puts it well when he says 'Without the internet to fact-check and contextualize what the media shows us, our ability to form opinions about what is happening in the world would be totally at the mercy of organisations whose reportage comes filtered through world views that are perhaps no more or less distorted than any other but which claim, without any justification, to be 'objective'.
An astonishing and moving report on the Today Program this morning.
An obvious question in this whole conflict, that until this morning I had not seen discussed at all in the media, is to examine the basis of Hezbollah's demand that in exchange for freeing the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers*, the Israelis should release prisoners. That it should be the BBC of all organisations that pursued this question is amazing, but the substance of their report is even more so. Suffice it to say that the Today presenter sounded like she was close to tears at one point.
(* why does no one ever mention the three Israeli soldiers they killed?)
The murderous events that form the basis of the report are truly shocking.
On April 22, 1979, Samir Kuntar led a group of four who entered Israel from Lebanon by boat. They belonged to the organization PLF under the leadership of Abu Abbas. Around midnight they arrived at the coastal town of Nahariya about six miles south of the Lebanese border. The four killed a policeman who ran across them and were able to break into the apartment of the Haran family before police reinforcements had arrived. The unit took 28-year-old Danny Haran hostage along with his four-year-old daughter Einat. The mother, Smadar Haran, was able to hide in a crawl space above the bedroom with her two-year-old daughter Yael. Kuntar's group understood that there were more people in the house and went around looking for them, shooting rounds and throwing hand grenades.
After holding to the hostages, a shootout with Israeli policemen and soldiers erupted. Samir Kuntar shot and killed the father at close range in front of his daughter, and then murdered the four-year-old girl by smashing her head with the butt of his rifle against a rock, crushing her skull. Tragically, the two-year-old girl was accidentally suffocated to death, when her mother desperately tried to keep her quiet. A policeman and two of Samir Kuntar's unit were also killed. Kuntar and the fourth participant in the shootout were captured. The latter, Ahmed Abarrass, was freed by Israel in the 1986 Ahmed Jibril prisoner deal in return for three Israeli soldiers.
Radio 4 Today Program
03/08/06
Part 1
0840 The victims of Lebanese prisoners held in Israel talk about proposals to exchange them for safe return of Israeli soldiers.
Listen to Part 1 - Kuntar's brother speaks
Part 2
0849 We continue our interview with Samadar Haran-Kaiser, a victim of Samir Qantar.
Listen to Part 2 - the murdered man's wife speaks
Permalink
Kuntar's brother lies to defend him: he was defending his country... in an operation against the Israeli military.
Samadar Haran pithily replies: show me who your hero is and I will tell you who you are.
Free Samir Kuntar
The World Should Know What He Did to My Family
By Smadar Haran Kaiser
Sunday, May 18, 2003
-------------
A cartoon that admirably summarises the difference between Israel and Hezbollah. (Thanks JSL)
-------------
Pallywood - how Palestinians have staged scenes of death and injury that are then widely broadcast unquestioningly all over the world. (Thanks Andy)
-------------
Great stuff from Andy, definitely worth following some of the links he's dug up
-------------
I've had enough of this "disproportionate" nonsense. Here, Chait makes many points which are: true, blindingly obvious to anyone with a brain, and rarely mentioned in the media (if at all).
Israel's justifiable use of force
Jonathan Chait
TNR Online
24.07.06
Israel's counteroffensive against Hezbollah may not be a good idea. But the main criticism that is being made against it, at home and abroad--namely, that Israel is using "disproportionate force"--is just silly. As the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday: "Critics have said Israel's response to the killing of eight soldiers and capture of two others by the Shiite Muslim guerrillas last week is disproportionate."
First of all, Israel is responding not just to those recent killings but to a long string of attacks since it withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. The kidnapping was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Second, as the Israeli government rightly points out, no country operates on the principle of responding to aggression with no more force than was originally used against it. During World War II, Germany sunk a lot of American ships and declared war on us, and in return we flattened its cities, killed or captured hundreds of thousands of its solders and occupied its land. That was hardly a proportionate response.
Now, it is true that Israel's counteroffensive has taken the lives of several hundred Lebanese civilians (many entirely innocent, others who sheltered Hezbollah rockets) and displaced perhaps half a million more. Every innocent death is a tragedy. But the brutal fact is that civilian deaths are Hezbollah's strongest weapon. As Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, once said: "We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death."
Thus, Hezbollah places its rockets and other potential targets in homes, knowing that Israel cannot hit back without creating collateral damage. This does not relieve Israel of the burden of minimizing civilian casualties as best it can. The point is that if Israel has to operate under a code of ethics that renders civilian deaths unacceptable, then it automatically loses. The ramifications would be dire and ultimately aid the cause of Islamic radicals in such a way as to bring about many more innocent deaths over the long run.
The real question, then, is not whether Israel's counteroffensive is disproportionate but whether it's working. Israel says every one of its air strikes has a specific strategic and military rationale. The attacks on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure are not "collective punishment," they're an attempt to prevent Hezbollah from transporting the captured soldiers to Iran and to prevent Iran and Syria from resupplying Hezbollah. Where Israel has bombed civilian areas, it has been in an attempt to strike Hezbollah's rockets.
If those strikes are carrying out their intended effect, then it's a justifiable response. If they're not, then it's not justifiable. But proportionality has nothing to do with it. If Israel was attacking Lebanon's infrastructure at random, then it would be wrong even if it killed fewer Lebanese than Hezbollah killed Israelis.
JP's latest chimes with something Andy and I have been discussing of late. I too grow tired of the word 'disproportionate' being bandied about. I find it particularly disappointing in supporters of the Iraq war - what was proportionate about the coalition's actions? (This is not to denounce the Iraq war - just to say that proportionality never entered into it.) What really sticks in my craw is an attempt to support Israel in principle while condemning it in practice. Criticism is fine, but an idea of what Israel SHOULD be doing instead would not go amiss. (Freedland in yesterday's Standard is an example, but I can't offer you a link.)
As far as I can see there are three internally consistent positions (I look to JP to examine my claim).
1) Israeli action is justified and the tactics correct.
2) Israeli action is justified but the tactics are incorrect.
3) Israeli action is not justified so no action should be taken.
All of the above can be argued, but I do feel that if your position is '2', then it wouldn't hurt to offer an alternative. Or at least be clear that you don't have a clue. But in a lot of what I'm reading there's the tacit assumption that there's an alternative, without any indication of what it might be. There's also an awful lot of what appears to be 'Israel has a right to defend herself, but shouldn't actually do anything' which I would suggest is not particularly consistent. (Incidentally, I think '3' unravels pretty quickly if put under any kind scrutiny and while it may be internally consistent I suspect that anyone holding that view would be revealed to be inconsistent if they were to imagine a similar scenario involving any other country.)
On a related but seperate note. The extent to which Israel is losing the propganda war is astounding. I recently expressed my support for Israel in a gathering of close friends. They assumed I must be joking. That my comments were some kind of post-modern irony. When it became clear that I meant what I said they began looking at me as if I'd just expressd support for Hitler or Stalin. (Actually I think Stalin would have been more acceeptable to them.)
Hizballah Terrorist Attacks Since May 2000
...as of July 24, 2006
by Mitchell Bard
Interesting to compare the list above with the comments here:
Interview with Ibrahim Moussawi, chief editor of the Hizbollah television channel.
Today Program
05/08/06
-------------------
another cartoon: Daled Amos: Cry To Those Using Babies
See the pics here:
Photos that damn Hezbollah
Herald Sun
July 30, 2006
THIS is the picture that damns Hezbollah. It is one of several, smuggled from behind Lebanon's battle lines, showing that Hezbollah is waging war amid suburbia. The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons. Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon. The photographs, from the Christian area of Wadi Chahrour in the east of Beirut, were taken by a visiting journalist and smuggled out by a friend.
...
The images include one of a group of men and youths preparing to fire an anti-aircraft gun metres from an apartment block with sheets hanging out on a balcony to dry. Others show a militant with AK47 rifle guarding no-go zones after Israeli blitzes. Another depicts the remnants of a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket in the middle of a residential block blown up in an Israeli air attack.
The Melbourne man who smuggled the shots out of Beirut and did not wish to be named said he was less than 400m from the block when it was obliterated. "Hezbollah came in to launch their rockets, then within minutes the area was blasted by Israeli jets," he said. "Until the Hezbollah fighters arrived, it had not been touched by the Israelis. Then it was totally devastated. "It was carnage. Two innocent people died in that incident, but it was so lucky it was not more."
The release of the images comes as Hezbollah faces criticism for allegedly using innocent civilians as "human shields". Mr Egeland blasted Hezbollah as "cowards" for operating among civilians."When I was in Lebanon, in the Hezbollah heartland, I said Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending in among women and children," he said.
A quick update on the propaganda war:
Here is a link to an official Hizbollah website that has been set up specifically to cover 'Israeli Aggression on Lebanon'.
http://www.moqawama.net/
(Source: Wikipedia)
Note how many of the updates come from Western news sources (Guardian, AFP) and even Israeli ones (Haaretz, Jerusalem Post - though in these cases what is reported as bad news in Israel is here portrayed as Hiz's success.)
I found this while looking to see if the BBC linked to Hiz's official site in any of their external links from their news coverage. As it happens they do not. I'm wondering if this because the BBC is too craven to show Hiz for what it really is, or if anti-terror laws prohibit them from doing so. Does anyone know?
Good post from Wembley. Incidently, I agree with him on TB (most of our other British politicians have been an embarrasement).
Regarding BBC bias, it might be worth making a distinction between shows like the Today Programme (and Panorama) which follow their own relatively independent editorial line and the BBC News service itself.
Post from Normblog (weblog of Norman Geras) on The Socialist Worker and Hizbollah:
The Hizbolleft
Excellent piece by Michael Portillo on Blair. He is full of admiration of Blair 'the global statesman'. What really blows my mind is that I bloody agree with him! Weird. I have been very critical of Blair on civil liberties BUT as Wembley says he has shown real courage and conviction in his defence of Israel and his position on the middle east. On the whole I think Blair's instinctive understanding of the situation is spot on. It's when you get past the inspiring speeches to the strategy that I think Blair comes unstuck. That being said sometimes rhetoric is important and now it is absolutely vital to have a statesman clearly articulate what we are fighting for here.
Strange but true: with Blair gone, Britain will be weaker
I envy Tony Blair’s biographer. The contradictions of this prime minister’s personality provide material for a fascinating study. One day he plumbs the depths of sleaze. The next he is the global statesman, articulating as nobody else can what should be our hopes and fears in this dangerous world. On those good days he outclasses by a distance his political contemporaries at home and abroad. Writing almost weekly about him in this column, I am alternately driven close to extremes of condemnation and praise.
In a speech last week in Los Angeles, in words that sounded like his own, he set out in simple terms the threat posed to the world by “an arc of extremism” that includes Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and the terrorists operating in Iraq. He lamented that “so much of western opinion appears to buy the idea that the emergence of this global terrorism is somehow our fault”. With startling clarity he countered: “It is based on religious extremism . . . And not just any religious extremism, but a specifically Muslim version.”
He called for the moderates of the world — including moderate Muslims — to engage in a war of values, in other words to win the argument for secular government, freedom of expression and plurality.
Some interpreted the speech as a retreat in the face of cabinet dissent against his support for the US and Israel, and his refusal during the days before the United Nations resolution yesterday to call for an unconditional ceasefire. Blair refused to be neutral between the fire and the fire brigade. He wanted Israel to have a full opportunity to extinguish Hezbollah.
I don't know if this is Portillo's phrase, but I've rarely heard a better soundbite:
Blair refused to be neutral between the fire and the fire brigade.
View of the conflict from two UK citizens with dual nationalight; one Lebanese one Israeli. Both answer readers' questions.
It's from BBC News online and has that slightly shallow feel you get from such a short selection of comments, but worth a look nonetheless. (By this I mean the feature seems shallow, not the experiences of the two women interviewed.)
Ghada Mitri. Lebanese.
Sharon Healy. Israeli.
I'd planned to cut down on posts that were just redirects to other articles, but here's a couple I wanted to share.
1) Harold Evans lambastes demonstrators with placards proclaiming 'We are all Hizbollah now', making reference to the story of Samir Kuntar (see JP's posts passim.) For photos of the placards referred to by HE go here. (Hat tip: Harry's Place)
2) An article from the Observer that suggests that Hiz suicide bombers may not all be motivated by religious fundamentalism. (It is essential, however, to look at some of the counterarguments offered in the comments. GaurdiansGuardian [sic] is particularly worth looking at. There's also some interesting stuff by other posters along the lines of 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' looking at Irgun and the King David Hotel bombing commemoration I posted about earlier. The comments are dense but some are most definitely worth looking at. (You can weed out the crazies quite quickly.)
Here's one of the comments from the excellent Harold Evans piece blogged by Dan:
Apologists digest:
Black Sudanese resort to damaging skin cream to look whiter.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060802/hl_nm/sudan_skin_dc
"During civil strife, skin tone often meant the difference between life and death. Southerners, traditionally Christian or animist, complain of prejudice against them in everyday life, and some northerners privately claim superiority over their darker and non-Arab countrymen."
Of course this the fault of Bush...or Israel...or poverty...or oppression...
Pakistani Christian brutally beaten by villagers for drinking from public water fountain and "contaminating" it for Muslims�
http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/s06080026.htm
Again, it must be Bush...Israel...poverty...oppression...
Russian Imam killed during prayers by fundamentalists...
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2006/08/08/031.html
Keep reciting: Bush...Israel...poverty...oppression...
Iranian woman to be executed for same crime that male is only imprisoned for...
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE130842006
We must not be diverted; the fault is Bush...Israel...poverty...oppression...
Jihad in Thailand? Those Buddhists are imperialists!...
http://www.manager.co.th/IHT/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9490000100076
It must be because, you guessed it, Bush...Israel...poverty...oppression...
The other article Dan found, What we still don't understand about Hizbollah, is interesting, as it challenges our assumption that all suicide bombers are fundamentalists. However it is somewhat devalued by this line:
The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.
I would give anyone short shrift who suggested to me that Israel's best method of dealing with Hizbollah is to - wait for it - withdraw from Lebanon.
The comments on the Hizbollah article are a vital corrective to some of the points made within it. I quote two of them in full to save y'all the trouble of scrolling through them:
GaurdiansGuardian
Robert Pape is not the only one who has collected and analyzed data about Arab terrorists and suicide bombers. I would very much doubt that Pape has as much data as the Israelis, or that that he has the depth, familiarity, and capabilities that the Israelis have, in analyzing the phenomenon. Israel has studied the terror mentality in depth and, as a result, has been tremendously successful in combating it (if not in eradicating it entirely).
Israel has learned that it is not the suicide bomber who needs to be stopped but rather the organization that trains and send him. And that is where Israel concentrates its efforts.
The dispatching organizations are very much Islamic fundamentalist. They find their candidate bombers from among political radicals of all colors. And while you could find the same willing type of fanatic in any country, it is the supporting organization, the training, and the indoctrination that activates them, and is most dangerous.
goblok
"Suicide terrorism is not a product of Islamic fundamentalism".
Yes, but Islamic fundamentalist suicide terrorism is a product of Islamic fundamentalism.
Perhaps Hezbollah suicide bombers in the 1980s, and Hezbollah fighters today, are motivated more by nationalist opposiiton to Israeli occupation than by religious fundamentalism. On the other hand, why did it continue to attack Israel even after the end of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon? Why is it supported and armed by Iran, whose president has vowed to destroy Israel, but not say, by Turkey, which has a democratic government? Common Shia fundamentalist ideology is surely an important factor.
It is thus plausible that a genuinely democratic government in Iran would be less extremely anti-Israel and less devoted to arming Hezbollah, (although of course I am not implying that current western governments' policy is intended to encourage democratic government in Iran).
In other words, it is reasonable to believe that transforming West Asian societies to be less influenced by Islamic fundamentalism will help reduce anti-Israeli extremism and thus, indirectly, anti-American terrorism. The question is whether promoting democracy is the best way to promote such a transformation and if it is, what is the best way to promote democracy and how can we prevent Bush and Blair from fueling fundamentalism.
Further afield, Islamic fundamentalism is surely a main cause of much suicide terrorism, including the 9/11 attack, which, let's face it, is bound to be the attack of most concern to Americans. For example, non-Muslims are not allowed even to set foot in the city of Mecca. The fundamentalist xenophobia inhrent in this kind of thinking leads onto the "no US troops in the Holy Land, even if they are defending Kuwait" mentality, which leads onto al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks.
Similarly, it is difficult to see the 7/7 bombers as merely campaigning for British withdrawal for Iraq. Millions of Britons opposed the invasion of Iraq peacefully; what made the bonbers different was the religious ideology which allowed them to worship their own martyrdom and scorn the lives of their fellow passengers.
Jamaah Islamiyah in Indonesia planted bombs in Christian churches in December 2000, and then switched to suicide attacks for the 2002 Bali bombs. The method is secondary, but again, the root ideology is Islamic fundamnetalism; there was no "secular and strategic goal".
In conclusion, I agree that Islamic fundamentalists did not invent suicide bombings. But the perceived success of Hezbollah suicide bombings in Lebanon has made suicide attacks especially attractive to Islamic fundamentalists, an attraction reinforced by the 9/11 attacks. Al=Qaeda-type organizations, which carry out most suicide bombings against Western targets, are clearly founded on Islamic fundamentalist ideology and any strategy to combat them must prioritize efforts to counter the influence of that ideology.
If you have the time / interest it's worth looking at some of the others too. I think Pape reaches a false conclusion - namely that because the majority of suicide bombers that he indentified (27 out of 41) were not Islamic fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalism has little to do with the motivation of suicide bombers. Rather, I think that the data demonstrates how certain personality types are drawn to organisations that offer a hermetically sealed, absolutist world view which apparently has all the answers. That some communists number among the bombers is not a huge surprise. And as one of the comments says, it's unclear from the study whether or not the bombers had converted to or reaffirmed their faith in Islam at the time of their murderous suicide.
What is interesting is Pape's assertin that what nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.
Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organisations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective. Most often, it is a response to foreign occupation.
However, while it worth looking at what those short term strategic and secular goals might be, it's still worth keeping in mind the long term goals as well. I disagree with Pape when he says that religion has virtually nothing to do with it - withdrawal of occupying forces may be the aim of some organisations but it does not account for Ahmedinajad, nor indeed the number of suicide attacks carried out between factions in Iraq. This is only the latest.
Remember the family killed on a Gaza beach a few weeks ago?
Here are two opposing views of what happened:
1) Human Rights Watch
2) Honestreporting.com
Can anyone help me figure out which one is right?
Interesting to see the love for Hezbollah spread around the Lebanon, and also to note that the predilection for conspiracy theories across the Muslim world is alive and well.
Only bombs disturb the silence as front line draws close to Tyre
[I]n small pockets of the northern suburbs a few people still eke out a precarious existence. Refugees from southern villages cower in blocks of flats with the few Tyre residents unable or unwilling to leave. The two communities, forced by war to become neighbours, regard each other with unease. The refugees come from Hizbollah's strongholds and see the residents of Tyre, where the movement is less popular, as potential Israeli spies. There are tales of Lebanese agents daubing the homes of Hizbollah fighters with invisible paint that can be picked out only by Israeli jets.
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More evidence of photographic fraud in Hezbollah's propaganda war:
Photo Fraud in Lebanon
Aish.com
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Just how badly has Beirut been affected by Israeli "war crime" bombing? No matter how sceptical you are, the following (from a report dated 29/7) surely comes as a shock:
Beirut, all the rest of Beirut, 95% of Beirut, lives and breathes better than a fortnight ago. All those who have not sided with terrorism know they have strictly nothing to fear from the Israeli planes, on the contrary! One example: last night the restaurant where I went to eat was jammed full and I had to wait until 9:30 pm to get a table. Everyone was smiling, relaxed, but no one filmed them: a strange destruction of Beirut, is it not?
And here's a map purportedly showing Israeli bombing limited to Hezbollah areas:
Sources:
Original article in French:
Les gens les plus hypocrites de la terre
Michaël Béhé
29/7/06
English translation
According to the latest news Israel has agreed to accept a ceasefire. Assuming the reports are correct I have one question: Why?! None of the stated objectives of the war (e.g destroying Hezbollah)look even close to having been achieved. It would be a big mistake. And one that Hezbollah would claim as a victory.
Perry de Havilland has written a well argued post on this at Samizdata:
A ceasefire now makes Hezbollah the winner.
If Israel really does accept and implement a ceasefire on Monday, it will have accepted the worst of all possible worlds. If it agrees to an end to the fighting which does not disarm Hezbollah, or even push it behind the Litani River, and does not get a third party force capable of fighting Hezbollah into Southern Lebanon, it would be fair to say Israel has achieved none of its war aims whatsoever. In short, Hezbollah will have won and we will soon be seeing celebrations in the streets across the Islamic world to that effect.
The primary Israeli method of attack, a series of destructive operational level1 air strikes against Lebanon's infrastructure, only made sense if it was intended to isolate the enemy and dislocate its logistics as an adjunct to a massive and robust attack on the ground with a significant portion of its formidable army, with the intention at crushing Hezbollah as military force.
Otherwise, what was the point of the non-tactical strikes? As Hezbollah already had large numbers of artillery rockets deployed as organic supply with its front line units (demonstrably so), the air interdiction only made sense if Israel was planning an extended campaign for as long as it took to destroy Hezbollah, which means preventing Hezbollah's resupply. Why else blow power-stations, fuel depots, bridges, roads and runways deep into the country rather than just strike tactical targets where Hezbollah is deployed? Bringing the Lebanese transportation system to a standstill was surely done to stop movement of supply so that as Hezbollah formations expended their munitions (a process that would increase as more units were engaged directly by the Israeli army), they would quickly become much less effective due to logistic dislocation. This is 'Air Interdiction 101', the sort of thing military planners have understood since 'Operation Strangle' in Italy in 1944.
But what Israel has done so far is a robust air offensive in support of little more than a series of limited objective raids with only a small fraction of the army. This has not only failed (unsurprisingly) to destroy Hezbollah, it has failed to even displace them far enough back onto Lebanon to prevent them firing rockets into Haifa on an almost daily basis throughout this campaign.
And now, having killed a great many people but still leaving a large number of Hezbollah fighters very much alive and still in possession of both their Katyushas and the positions from which to fire them, the Israeli government plans to stop? Having weathered what Israel threw at them (but not what the Israelis inexplicably failed to throw at them), Hezbollah can, quite justifiably, claim victory and greatly enhance their stature simply by virtue of Israel failed to gain any of its publicly stated war aim.
Can anyone tell me what the hell the Israeli government is thinking?
I have to say I'm also pretty confused, but hey, maybe I'm missing something (highly likely) and someone can explain it to me. I'm not being ironic I would be genuinely interested to hear the reasons for accepting a ceasefire now.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard really gets it. No equivocation. No waffle. No bullshit.
Damn it. I might just have to move to Australia.
AUSTRALIAN PM: 'DISARM HEZBOLLAH'
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said Hezbollah must be disarmed if UN truce in Lebanon is to last.
[...]
Mr Howard said he had serious concerns about whether the UN-brokered truce between Israel and Hezbollah could last.
"It looks good on the surface but I am, myself, a little discomfited by the lack of specificities and the language regarding the disarming of Hezbollah," the prime minister said.
"Unless there's a clear determination and a clear authority to disarm Hezbollah this isn't going to work.
"I have real and serious reservations about the effectiveness and the lasting character of this resolution," Mr Howard added.
I find myself in full agreement with Andy and the de Havilland article. Olmert seems to have committed a colossal error in leaving Hezbollah with anything other than a catastrophic defeat to account for.
Several articles I dug up agreed with this view, but I went to look at today's Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post editorials, to find opinion in those newspapers somewhat mixed. Note that I certainly didn't do enough research to say whether the articles below are representative. This led on to some digging at debka.com, where they have some assessments of Israel's military performance.
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This first article agrees with the Andy/de Havilland position:
Olmert's war promises are left unfulfilled
Telegraph
14/08/2006
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert began the war against Hizbollah with two clear aims - to crush the Islamic militant group and free two captured soldiers in the process. A month after fighting began he has achieved neither. As many Hizbollah rockets as ever were hitting Israel yesterday, and soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Udi Regev are still in captivity. Mr Olmert must now explain to a battered Israeli public what has been gained in a war which has cost 144 Israeli lives and led to a month of cowering in bomb shelters and protected rooms for residents of the north. He must also explain what Israel has gained from its dramatic last ditch offensive over the weekend, which has seen it take its heaviest casualties of the campaign. Critics see this weekend's onslaught as Mr Olmert's attempt to declare victory and save his career.
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... as does Netanyahu:
Olmert: Resolution 1701 changes strategic situation
Jerusalem Post
14/08/06
Opposition leader MK Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) told the Knesset plenum that "Unfortunately, there will be another round [in this war] because the government's just demands weren't met" by the cease-fire agreement that went into effect Monday morning. "The [kidnapped] soldiers weren't returned home, the Hizbullah was not disarmed … Right now, we are [merely] in an interim period between wars," Netanyahu warned. "And there is no one who will prevent our enemies from rearmed and preparing for the next round."
"We were a responsible opposition," Netanyahu said. "We aided in every way, including in the media war." But "our public duty is to tell the truth, because unfortunately there will be another round." Netanyahu warned that "We were living in a coma, and received an alarm warning telling us to return to reality as it is, and to return to ourselves and to those values that will secure our existence in the future."
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This one is more a mixed opinion, pointing to some good outcomes as well as grievous mistakes made:
A wake-up call
Jerusalem Post
Aug. 12, 2006
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Here, a positive review for Olmert in Haaretz:
Olmert should stay
By Akiva Eldar
Haaretz
14/08/06
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Here, some support for Eldar's view:
Tehran Takes Gloomy View of the Lebanon War and Truce
Debka
August 14, 2006
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On to the military assessments. This is an alarming and surprising report:
Many Israeli combat soldiers take a pretty dim view of their superiors and elected leaders
Debka
August 14, 2006
- The rear command did not know what was going on in the field.
- Some of their orders were suicidal. There were cases of officers and men agreeing to ignore such orders.
- Some of the tanks were ten years old and were confronted with an enemy armed with the most sophisticated, up-to-date equipment.
- Our training prior to being sent into battle was not adapted to the conditions we found in Lebanon.
- Their officers called Hizballah fighters terrorists or even primitive. This was a misleading misnomer. They are highly-trained, professional soldiers.
- Although we were better, Hizballah fought like lions.
- We had no food or water.
- Our entry into battle in Lebanon was belated.
- The troops were short of accurate intelligence.
- We were not prepared for combat against camouflaged bunkers.
- We had no information on the Hizballah’s anti-tank missile techniques.
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An analysis of the fighting, showing how Israeli tactics changed for the better:
Tehran Sends Archterrorist Mughniyeh to Rescue Hizballah
Debka
August 5, 2006
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Back to the pessimism. Point 3 is particularly shocking, and if true, suggests that someone should be standing over Sharon's bed with a baseball bat in case he pulls through:
Israel’s Surprise Raid of Baalbek Is No Panacea for Tactical Ills
Debka
28/07/06
[T]he IDF’s six principal failings in the Lebanon war:
1. Israeli elected leaders, Olmert and defense minister Peretz, lack military experience and the skills required for managing a war.
2. The military leadership qualities of chief of staff Lt.-General Halutz, former commander of the air force where he grew up, are questionable.
3. Olmert’s predecessor left him with a flawed legacy. During his six and-a- half years as premier, Ariel Sharon shook up the top levels of the IDF’s general command, military intelligence and the Mossad (although not the Shin Bet) and stuffed them with appointees who subscribed to his political philosophy.
Israel’s top military and security echelons have never before been picked for their political outlook. Sharon’s axe created a monolithic establishment lacking in the motivation burning in their predecessors for developing brilliantly innovative methods of warfare.
4. In six years of counter-terror warfare against the Palestinians, the IDF focused on perfecting small-time tactics for keeping local terror fires under control, but failed to produce methods applicable to a transition from fighting terrorists to waging war. Hizballah has foisted this transition on the Israeli military.
5. Israeli war planners, like the US army in Iraq, came to rely too heavily on air power, firepower and hi-tech weaponry for combating terror. They neglected to draw the lessons of the three-year Iraq war.
6. Hizballah’s tacticians and their Iranian Revolutionary Guards mentors studied every Israeli move in its 2002 Defensive Wall Operation against the Palestinian terrorist stronghold of Jenin, which ended in all the towns of the West Bank falling to the Israeli military. Taking this battle as their master plan, they invented a new war doctrine to fit a Hizballah offensive against an Israeli army which had not revised its doctrines of war in the intervening four years.
According to this article, not only are the Israeli govt and military at each other's throats, but Olmert bottled a chance to open the conflict up (with US backing) to include Syria and Iran, and possibly deal the Iranian nuclear program a massive blow.
Israeli Government and IDF racked by unprecedented leadership crisis
IsraelInsider.com
By Jonathan Ariel
August 9, 2006
Olmert's responsibility for inaction goes much further. The US administration had given Israel the green light to attack Syria. A senior military source has confirmed to Israel Insider that Israel did indeed receive a green light from Washington in this regard, but Olmert nixed it.
The scenario was that Syria, no military match for Israel, would face a rapid defeat, forcing it to run to Iran, with which it has a defense pact, to come to aid.
Iran, which would be significantly contained by the defeat of its sole ally in the region, would have found itself maneuvered between a rock and a hard place. If it chose to honor its commitment to Syria, it would face a war with Israel and the US, both with military capabilities far superior to Iran's. If Teheran opted to default on its commitment to Damascus, it would be construed by the entire region, including the restless Iranian population, as a conspicuous show of weakness by the regime. Fascist regimes such as that of the ayatollahs cannot easily afford to show that kind of weakness.
I agree with much of what has been posted above. But for a cheerier view (the glass is half full, or Hiz is half destroted) here's Tim Hames in yesterday's Times.
If this was a defeat, the Israelis must be praying for a lot more of them
Tim Hames
IF ONLY Israel were as effective at public relations as at military operations, the results of the conflict on and around its border with Lebanon would be so much starker. As it is, however, the real meaning of the UN resolution that will start to come into force today is being widely misrepresented. Hezbollah is hailing a “victory” of sorts, albeit one of a presentational character. In a bizarre situation, Israeli politicians on both the hard Left and the hard Right appear to agree with the terrorists. All are profoundly mistaken.
Read on
I like that article because it cheered me up. However, a nagging voice at the back of my mind keeps whispering that this (don't ask me how I stumbled upon it) is closer to the truth.
Diplomacy and appeasement aren't going to keep us safe from Islamic extremism any more. Those tactics will simply delay the inevitable. While we negotiate with and appease terror groups like Hezbollah and rogue terror-sponsoring states like Iran they will simply use the delays to grow stronger and more menacing. They don't see a solution to our hostilities as being one where we can all live in peace. They see this is a win/lose proposition. Either they win or we win, and they're playing to win.
America and the west, apparently, are playing for a draw or a stalemate.
We are going to lose the war on terror unless we start playing to win. That means fighting in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and maybe even Iran. That means letting Israel finish its fight against Hezbollah instead of pushing for yet another cease fire. These extremists will never stop coming after us, and unless we defeat them they will only grow stronger.
From sayanythingblog.com, (First time I've cited a blog named after a John Cusack movie). Original post: An Anti-War Leftist Almost Stumbles Onto War On Terror Truth
JSL actually dug this one up. Natanyahu's been the best Israeli spokesman by far in this whole conflict, in my opinion:
Excerpt from an interview with Bibi Natanyahu on the BBC:
Interviewer: How come so many more Lebanese have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?
Natanyahu: Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?
Interviewer: Why not?
Natanyahu: Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the war was caused by Germany’s aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children’s hospital, killing 83 little children. Perhaps you have another question?
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BBC accused of lying over destruction of Bint Jbail:
Orla Guerin - Busted!
See video at LittleGreenFootballs.
Excellent stuff. I've always felt Orla Guerin was biased - as much in her emotive performance as anything else.
There's a bit of a debate raging in the comments as to whether Bint Jbail describes the whole town (hence the charge of lying) or whether it describes a specific area. One poster suggests it's analagous to talking about Manhatten, with the suburbs being equivalent to Jersey. (This would reduce the charge against Guerin from lying to 'being economical with the truth' which is not particularly to be admired in an 'objective' journalist.)
As I'm unfamilar with Lebanese geography I did a quick search to see if the Guerin defender's claim had any merit. I didn't find an answer, but I did find this.
http://www.bintjbeil.com/index.en.html#
Within it is an article by George Monbiot which challenges the assumption that Hiz started this conflict. (Similar to the Galloway line in an interview that you can find on the same site.) This doesn't fit my understanding of events, but in the interests of investigating all claims I put the article up here for someone else (JP, JSL?) to take apart. (e.g. Monbiot claims that the Israeli action was carefully planned - a direct contradiction of the excellent analysis posted by JSL.) Your (collective) comments are actively sought after.
Thanks JSL. I suppose the key point that Hiz defenders like Monbias (cheap shot I know) and Galloway overlook is that Hiz are committed to the destruction of Israel (and jews in general). If Hiz (and Hamas for that matter) posed no threat to Israel then there would (I imagine) be no Israeli 'aggression' in the first place.
For what it's worth (and we should probably move this discussion to a separate thread), I read the last Observer (it's the Sunday Guardian by another name), & noted a mix of attitudes to Israel / Islam:
This Observer Leader just blew me away (because it's great, I should add):
These ludicrous lies about the West and Islam
The Observer
Leader
Sunday August 13, 2006
The wonderful Nick Cohen was as wonderful as ever
Save us from the crackpots who see Zionist conspiracies in everything
Nick Cohen
The Observer
Sunday August 13, 2006
Then there was this, which contains a lot of bollocks but some wisdom:
The land of the free - but free speech is a rare commodity
Henry Porter
Sunday August 13, 2006
The Observer
Then this, with an even higher bollocks-to-wisdom ration:
Nobody's victory, but in the end Israel could not defeat Hizbollah
The Observer
Sunday August 13, 2006
But for all I know the Observer's editorial line is quite different to the Guardian's.
Oh yeah - the Independent's attitude *is* truly appalling.
A couple of things on The Guardian issue.
1) The Observer is owned by the same group as The Guardian, but is editorially independent from it. The Observer may well be a fine paper but it has no more direct bearing on The Guardian than Auto Trader (which the group also owns.) However, what the papers do share is the commitment to editorial independence (from the burden of making a profit) as described by Wembley.
2) While I'm sure The Guardian likes to keep its circulation up, it consistently runs at a loss so it's not entirely fair to say that it's editorial line is a response to market pressures. (The source for the comments on Guardian ownership and circulation can be found here.)
3) I personally gave up on the Guardian because I got bored of it. And a large measure of that boredom was a result of its choice of columnists. However, I agree with Wemb that columnists and editorial line are not the same thing. (And for the record, I have a history of getting bored of papers after a while, so that probably says more about me than it does about any paper. And while I'm on this autobiographical kick, I'm reminded that my Dad gave up on The Guardian after many years because of what he perceived as a consistently anti-Israel and borderline anti-semitic tone. At the time he switched to The Independent, which is slightly ironic in view of its current position.)
4) And lastly, it has been reported that The Guardian is looking at 'shaking up' its comment pages.
Again, we should probably be discussing this in a separate thread, but here are a couple of relevant articles. I also note that while conceptually anti-Zionism and anti-semitism are distinct, in practice the one is so often used as a veil for the other that I see nothing wrong with putting the burden of proof of innocence by default onto the anti-Zionist, precious few of whom (in my opinion) apply their anti-Jewish-state attitudes to any other national grouping.
Anti-Zionism is anti-semitism
Behind much criticism of Israel is a thinly veiled hatred of Jews
Emanuele Ottolenghi
November 29, 2003
The Guardian
"Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism"
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Israeli Arabs' war experience
During war many Haifa Arabs flee to West Bank cities, encounter humiliation, prefer to return to Katyushas. 'We will never again make donation or participate in demonstration for West Bank from now on,' said one Haifa Arab
Roee Nahmias
18/6/06
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Lebanese troops will not disarm Hizbollah
Telegraph
17/8/06
The president of Lebanon ruled out disarming Hizbollah yesterday, rejecting a central element of the United Nations plan for peace on the frontier with Israel. Disarming the guerrilla group is required under UN Resolution 1701, which was passed last Friday. Lebanon's army, aided by an expanded UN peacekeeping mission, was supposed to accomplish this task. But President Emile Lahoud, a Christian, fiercely criticised the proposal in a statement from Beirut. "It is disgraceful to demand the disarmament of the national resistance while the blood of martyrs is still warm," he said. "How can they ask us to disarm the only force in the Arab world who stood up to Israel?"
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Great comment from the Guardian editorial shakeup piece Dan found:
As a man, I am very tired of being sexually profiled for rape crimes. Whenever a rape occurs, the police only ever interview men as potential suspects. Clearly it is possible that some rapes could have been committed by lesbians wearing strap-ons. Yet do the police ever interview women? Do they hell. This is nothing more or less than discrimination against men. Help me put an end to gender profiling, by joining PITIFUL LIBERAL WANK, my new anti-profiling organisation.
From the same comment thread, a funny Galloway pic.
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More on media fraud in Lebanon.
Green Helmet acting as cynical movie director in qana
Controversy about an Israeli missile supposedly hitting an ambulance
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Lots of good stuff in the comments here: A chance missed to tame Hizbollah
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More about the prisoners held in Israeli jails that Hezbollah want released:
The Story Behind Hezbollah's Demands - transcript
The Story Behind Hezbollah's Demands - broadcast
An unmissable interview with Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, the first commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo. In laconic manner (the guy would make a good stand-up) he demolishes any hopes for the UN force.
It'll be a whole year before 15,000 UN troops get there, he reckons. "It's a recipe for disaster", most likely resulting in a repetition of Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia "which were not exactly success stories". The main problem is the weak mandate (the UN commander will have to get approval from the Lebanese chain of command before using deadly force!!), and the commander of the force will share the fate of General Dallaire in Rwanda, who I blogged about recently. "Ludicrous".
Today Program
19/08/06
0810 The UN is having problems finding the 3,500 troops it needs to secure the ceasefire in Southern Lebanon. We ask a commander from the war in Bosnia, General Lewis MacKenzie, whether a lasting settlement can be achieved.
Listen (start at 4'15'') | Permalink
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Another scathing judgement on Olmert's performance:
Hizbollah 3, Israel 0
Ralph Peters
New York Post
17/08/06
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More evidence of the perception of Hizbollah victory. Also the almost humorous prospect of Syria attacking Israel. For Israel that'd be like Chelsea losing the semi-finals of the Champions League and then getting to play Altrincham in the next round.
Syrians demand military action to reclaim Golan Heights
Telegraph
18/08/2006
Pressure is mounting on Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to follow Hizbollah's example and consider force to eject Israel from Syrian land that it has occupied for nearly 40 years. The public appetite for action is just one of the uncomfortable consequences regional rulers are facing, as Arabs compare their leaders' performances over Israel with the Lebanese "resistance".
Mr Assad, who supports Hizbollah, was quick to praise the militia's "victory" in a post-conflict speech and to bathe in its reflected glory. Their deeds, he said, had "shattered the myth of an invincible army".
...
But the idea of Mr Assad going to war with his massively more powerful neighbour has met with laughter in the Arab world. His father, Hafez al-Assad, liked to be known as the "Lion of Damascus". His son is considered to be mousy by comparison, particularly in pro-western Arab countries, whose leaders he attacked in his speech as "half-men in favour of half-solutions". Jordan's al-Ghad newspaper remarked that "the Syrian president spoke as if he had just returned from the front line". The Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat said that, since the loss of the Golan Heights, Syria "has not fired a single shot" at Israel.
Mr Assad's scramble to share Hizbollah's prestige reflects the standing that the organisation has won in 33 days of fighting. Arab nations had an unbroken record of defeat and humiliation at the hands of Israel, and what was no more than a successful defensive action has acquired the lustre of a great success. Posters have appeared in Beirut showing the Hizbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and lorries mounted with Katyusha rockets alongside the words "The Divine Victory", written in English.
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Troops scurry into Hizbollah heartland
Telegraph
18/08/2006
Lebanon's government took official control of the nation's south yesterday for the first time in a quarter of a century when troops crossed the Litani river to supervise the Israeli-Hizbollah ceasefire.
...
With 60 per cent of the army's ranks filled with Shia soldiers, and many commanders broadly sympathetic to Hizbollah, any order to begin disarming risks a revolt. But Israel expects nothing less than Hizbollah's emasculation - in line with UN resolutions ending the war. It has threatened to slow or halt its pull-out from southern Lebanon if this condition is not met. ...
Gen Shikhani's first speech to his troops in Marjayoun seemed carefully designed to reflect the prevailing sentiment in the army and in the south. "We salute on this solemn day firstly the martyrs who have shed their blood on the earth of the motherland and secondly we salute the resistance," he said. The deployment is widely seen in the south as a symbol of Hizbollah's "victory" over Israel. "I have a tear in my eye," said a man watching troops cross the Litani. "This is a sign of our victory."
He angrily rejected any idea of the army disarming Hizbollah, saying: "Everyone in the south is Hizbollah - even the Lebanese army is Hizbollah. Hizbollah will now assist the army to do its job." Many see the purpose of the deployment as to bolster Hizbollah numerically and ensure that if fighting resumes, the movement will have support.
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Rice: UN force won't physically disarm Hezbollah
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quoted in an American newspaper Thursday as saying that the UN force expected to deploy in south Lebanon will not be tasked with forcibly disarming Hezbollah.
"I don't think there is an expectation that this [UN] force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah," Rice told USA Today. "I think it's a little bit of a misreading about how you disarm a militia. You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of the militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily."
If Hezbollah resists international demands to disarm, Rice said, "one would have to assume that there will be others who are willing to call Hezbollah what we are willing to call it, which is a terrorist organization."
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Has anyone else thought it weird that there seems to be no mainstream coverage at all of whatever's going on in Gaza?
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Nice to see someone doing well in Iraq... and what kind of weird job is "professional mourner"? We never heard about that at careers counselling.
'Our business is booming with each roadside bomb'
The Guardian
August 18, 2006
Back in 1982 Radhwan Mizaal Ali opened a tiny shop offering funeral services. Now he runs six outlets and business is booming. "Whenever they beat war drums, our business flourishes more," he said as he puffed on a hookah at one of his shops. He offers everything a grieving family needs for a proper burial: chairs for the mourners, tape recorders and speakers to transmit Qur'anic verses, plates for traditional foods and a generator - all available for about $100 (£52) a day. From coffin makers to professional mourners who weep and wail at ceremonies, a wave of killings in Baghdad is fuelling a boom in the funeral industry.
...
Um Alaaa, 50, is a professional mourner who attends funerals to add emotion to the ceremony. She is training one of her six daughters to help. "I can't do more than three funerals a day," she said by telephone from Baghdad's Sadr City, a Shia stronghold, as she prepared to attend another funeral. She charges about $50 for each appearance. "Increasing demands give me the impression that this cursed country is running out of its people," she said.
There's gonna be another Amnesty report on Hezbollah, apparently.
Israel accused of war crimes
Press Association
August 23, 2006
Just saw a hysterical interview on Newsnight where the two guests were Jed Babbin, deputy undersecretary of defense during the first Bush Administration, and some bint from the French Foreign Ministry (quite attractive in an early 40's kinda way). The topic was the apparent contrast between French vigour in pursuing a Lebanon ceasefire whilst at the UN and French unwillingness to contribute more than a few snails to an actual intervention force.
Suffice it to say I have *never* seen a politician reduced to quite the bumbling, embarrassing incoherence displayed by the French woman, who was eventually cut off mid-sentence by the Newsnight presenter out of sheer pity. Babbin was marvellous, a born comedian with a cutting line in piss-taking remarks and Woody Allen's sense of timing. The French were a "comic opera" nation, this was "like something out of Gilbert & Sullivan", and - best of all - he quoted himself from 2003 when he said "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion".
Keep an eye on the Newsnight site, because if they put that video up it's funnier that *anything* you've ever seen on the Daily Show.
In an interview on Lebanese network New TV, Nasrallah appeared humbled by the scale of Israel's response to Hizbullah's kidnap of two IDF soldiers and he seemed to be tacitly apologizing to the Lebanese people for starting the war.
“[W]e did not believe, even by one percent, that the captive operation would result in such a wide-scale war, as such a war did not take place in the history of wars. Had we known that the captive operation would result in such a war we would not have carried it out at all.”
(hat tip - Andrew Sullivan)
Dershowitz butchers HRW's claims to objectivity in his usual devastating fashion. I've quoted the first and last paragraphs, the story itself contains AD's usual welter of evidence.
What is 'Human Rights Watch' watching?
By Alan Dershowitz
Jerusalem Post
Aug. 24, 2006
When it comes to Israel and its enemies, Human Rights Watch cooks the books about facts, cheats on interviews, and puts out predetermined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence. These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true.
...
Many former supporters of Human Rights Watch have become alienated from the organization, because of, in the words of one early supporter, "their obsessive focus on Israel."
Within the last month, virtually every component of the organized Jewish community, from secular to religious, liberal to conservative, has condemned Human Rights Watch for its bias. Roth and his organization's willful blindness when it comes to Israel and its enemies have completely undermined the credibility of a once important human rights organization. Human Rights Watch no longer deserves the support of real human rights advocates. Nor should its so-called reporting be credited by objective news organizations.
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Does this picture of Hizbollah training remind you of anyone?
The excellent Michael J. Totten is posting on Andrew Sullivan blog. It's definately worth checking out.
Here he blogs about video footage shot by Israeli video journalist Itai Anghel in Hezbollah controlled Lebanon.
War Movie
No victory for Hizbollah, say Lebanese Christians
Telegraph
01/09/2006
A leading Christian politician yesterday moved to puncture the triumphalist mood whipped up by Hizbollah after it declared victory in its war with Israel. "Israel lost but it does not mean Hizbollah won," said Samir Geagea, chief of the Lebanese Forces political movement. Lebanese Christians "don't like this triumphalism", he said."First of all they don't see that it was a victory. They feel on the contrary that it was a big loss for Lebanon, even though they acknowledge that the guerrillas of Hizbollah have done well on the battleground."
Mr Geagea's words indicate the grim new mood of realism across Lebanon as the euphoria of survival wears off and the cost of the conflict is counted. They also reflect a growing belief that far from strengthening Hizbollah, the war may actually have weakened the Shia radicals."On the Arab and Islamic front they gained fame and Sheikh Nasrallah has become a celebrity," he said. "But this is not something you can touch or spend."Inside Lebanon, the Lebanese who didn't agree with the strategy of Hizbollah have become more open in their position." These include Shia critics of the organisation "who are now much more outspoken then before".
Mr Geagea believes that the conflict has also undermined the relationship between Hizbollah and its chief Christian allies, retired general Michel Aoun and his party."They have lost some of their rank and file because of the alliance," he said. "I don't believe that Hizbollah have emerged from this with political advantages."
...
For Lebanon to progress, Mr Geagea says, Hizbollah will have to give up its weapons. The paradox is that having proclaimed victory it has now less justification than ever for maintaining its arms.
"Its strategy has been shown to be faulty," he said. "They said they should be allowed to keep their weapons to maintain an 'equilibrium of terror' with Israel. As long as they had them, Israel would not dare to attack. This has been shown to be an illusion.
"They justified not handing their arms to the state by saying that if they used them the Israeli response would be localised rather than affecting the whole country. This has also been shown to be wrong. Many things have been broken by this war. Not only the Lebanese infrastructure but many theories and assumptions." One consequence of the war is that Hizbollah's raison d'etre h as been removed, he said. The Lebanese army's move into the south and the eventual deployment of an international peacekeeping force has cut off the militia from the border it is pledged to defend. "Before the war the resistance movement operated on the frontier and had all the margin of manoeuvre they wanted," he said. "Now they are denied this luxury."
Lebanese pride at having stood up to Israel has given way to unease. "People feel insecure," Mr Geagea said. Hizbollah's actions "invite attacks from Israel or sanctions from America. They may lead to further Syrian and Iranian penetration inside Lebanon. "People have got fed up over the years with outside interference and wars. I am sure that 75 per cent of the country want to have a secure country and live in peace irrespective of everything else."
Mr Geagea believes that with Hizbollah now under pressure to become a conventional political party, the war may have created an opportunity for progress. "The road is open for us to have the Lebanon the majority dream of," he said. "We have the potential to be a real democracy in the Middle East — pluralistic, scientific and modern." All that depends on Hizbollah disarming, however. "They are not inclined to do that after all that happened," he said. "But we should keep trying."
I do find it amazing that this story hasn't made front page headlines. It seems to have only just made it to the Sunday Times, how many weeks after the initial Hezbollah kidnapping? Anyway, logic puzzle fans out there can try and explain away the following inconsistency:
Hezbollah wants to swap soldiers for child killer
The Sunday Times
September 03, 2006
IN his Israeli jail cell Samir Qantar, who is serving four life sentences for murder and terrorism, dreams about an exchange of prisoners that might allow him to go home to Lebanon. ...
Qantar, 44, has been in prison since 1979, when he took part in an attack whose horrifying outcome made him one of the most hated men in Israel. ...
Qantar’s role in the attack on the coastal town of Nahariya 27 years ago would make this an especially bitter pill for Israelis to swallow. A policeman was killed and a family taken hostage when Qantar’s group burst into their home. Danny Haran, 28, was shot at close range in front of his terrified four-year-old daughter Einat, whose head was then smashed with a rifle butt. The dead man’s wife Smadar hid in a loft with their two-year-old daughter Yael, keeping a hand over her mouth to stop her crying out. But the girl suffocated, leaving Smadar Haran bereft of her husband and both daughters.
...
Qantar, the longest-held Lebanese prisoner in Israel, was convicted of the murders of Danny and Einat Haran but his family in Lebanon continues to claim that he could not have killed them because he had been injured in a shoot-out with police by the time they died.
...
Samir Qantar, meanwhile, has expressed regrets about the death of four-year-old Einat. “The girl was innocent,” he admitted. “She was a little girl and there was no reason she should die. This girl is a very tragic story. It disturbed me then and will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Here is an interesting analysis of the war by Emanuele Ottolenghi:
Everything You Know About the Recent Mideast War is Wrong
I thought this quote was absolutely spot on:
Israel will now have a commission of inquiry, whose outcomes may end the careers of military and political leaders. It will reflect on its mistakes. It will cry over the futility of the deaths of so many of its best, due to those mistakes. It will blame those responsible and it will demand a heavy price of them. But it will get its answers.
What of Lebanon? Amidst the ruins of Beirut, the rubble of the bridges over the Litani, and the craters punctuating the highways, what does Nasrallah do? He proclaims victory. What does Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora do? He cries in front of the cameras, praises Hezbollah, and clings on to the myths of victory even as evidence of defeat is all around. They do not set up independent commissions, and they do not summon generals, politicians, and clerics, demanding they take responsibility. The last time an Arab country had its own commission of inquiry about a military defeat was in Iraq, in 1949.
Gaza women end mosque stand-off
BBC News
03/11/2006
Why Israel will go to war again – soon
John Keegan
Telegraph Comment
03/11/2006
There will soon be another war in the Middle East, this time a renewal of the conflict between the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Hizbollah. The conflict is inevitable and unavoidable. It will come about because Israel cannot tolerate the rebuilding of Hizbollah's fortified zone in south Lebanon, from which last year it launched its missile bombardment of northern Israel.
Hizbollah has now reconstructed the fortified zone and is replenishing its stocks of missiles there. Hamas is also creating a fortified zone in the Gaza Strip and building up its stocks of missiles. Israel, therefore, faces missile attack on two fronts. When the Israel general staff decides the threat has become intolerable, it will strike.
What happened in south Lebanon earlier this year has been widely misunderstood, largely because the anti-Israel bias in the international media led to the situation being misreported as an Israeli defeat.
It was no such thing. It was certainly an Israeli setback, but the idea that the IDF had suddenly lost its historic superiority over its Arab enemies and that they had acquired military qualities that had hitherto eluded them was quite false. Hizbollah suffered heavy losses in the fighting, perhaps as many as 1,000 killed out of its strength of up to 5,000 and it is only just now recovering.
What allowed Hizbollah to appear successful was its occupation of the bunker-and-tunnel system that it had constructed since June 2000, when the IDF gave up its presence in south Lebanon, which it had occupied since 1982. Although the IDF had got into south Lebanon, the casualties it had suffered in entering the fortified zone had alarmed the government and high command, since Israel's tiny population is acutely vulnerable to losses in battle. Israel's plan was to destroy Hizbollah's tunnels and bunkers, but the sending of a United Nations intervention force did not allow the destruction to be completed before the IDF was forced to withdraw.
Tunnel systems have played a crucial part in many modern campaigns, without attracting much attention. That is a serious oversight. The success of the Viet Cong in sustaining its war effort in Vietnam in 1968-72 depended heavily on its use of the so-called War Zone B, a complex of deep tunnels and underground bases north of Saigon, which had been begun during the war against the French in 1946-55.
War Zone B provided the Viet Cong with a permanent base of refuge and resupply that proved effectively invulnerable even against a determined American effort to destroy it. War Zone B has now become a major tourist attraction to Western visitors to Vietnam.
In its time, however, War Zone B was very far from being a holiday facility: it assured the survival of the Viet Cong close to Saigon and their ability to mount operations against the government forces and the Americans. Hizbollah, either by mimicry or on its own account, has now begun to employ a tunnel and underground base strategy against Israel. It was for that reason it was able to confront Israeli armoured forces in south Lebanon earlier this year.
The adoption of a tunnel strategy has allowed Hizbollah to wage asymmetric warfare against Israel's previously all-conquering armoured forces. The tunnel system is also impervious to attack by the Israeli Air Force. Since Israel's reason for existence is to provide a secure base for the Jewish people, and that of the IDF is to act as their shield and safeguard – functions that have been carried out with high success since 1948 – it is obvious that neither can tolerate a zone of invulnerability occupied by a sworn enemy located directly on Israel's northern border.
It is therefore an easy prediction to foresee that the IDF will – at some time in the near future – reopen its offensive against Hizbollah in south Lebanon and will not cease until it has destroyed the underground system, even if, in the process, it inflicts heavy damage on the towns and villages of the region. It is likely that it will also move against the underground system being constructed in the Gaza Strip. Hamas resupplies itself with arms and munitions brought from Egypt through those channels. Gaza is a softer target than south Lebanon, since it is an enclave that Israel easily dominates.
Indeed, the IDF may attack Gaza as a distraction from south Lebanon in an effort to make Hizbollah divide its forces and efforts.
Destroying the underground military facilities may be straightforward, but it is likely to create diplomatic complexities, particularly with the UN. Entering south Lebanon risks provoking a clash with Unifil, the major part of whose strength is provided by France. It is unlikely that such a risk will deter Israel. When national survival is at risk, Israel behaves with extreme ruthlessness. It attacked an American communications ship during the Six-Day War because it objected to America listening in to its most secret signals.
The big question hanging over an Israeli return to south Lebanon is whether that would provoke a war with Syria, Lebanon's Arab protector. The answer is quite possibly yes, but that such an extension of hostilities might prove welcome both to Israel and to the United States, which regards Syria as Iran's advanced post on the Mediterranean shore. What is certain is that – probably before the year is out – Israel will have struck at Hizbollah in south Lebanon. And the strike will come even sooner if Hizbollah reopens its missile bombardment of northern Israel from its underground systems.
Blogger Michael J. Totten argues with a member of Hezbollah.
US Ambassador John Bolton definitely has the comic timing to make a career as a stand-up.
Radio 4 Today Program
22/03/07
0830 Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells on why Britain and the US resisted international pressure to call for a ceasefire in the early days of last year's Israeli-Lebanon Conflict.
Listen | Permalink
News: regular army kills civilians in attempt to rid itself of a threat from Islamists ensconsed in Palestinian refugee camps.
Response 1: worldwide condemnation
Response 2: nobody cares
Guess which one you get when it's not the Israeli regular army?
Lebanese Army intensifies battle against militants in refugee camp
International Herald Tribune
21/5/07
"We thought it was Israel doing this," said Subhiya Hassan, whose husband was killed and all four children were wounded in the shelling Sunday. "We never thought that the army would attack us like this."
And this one comment was noted with some irony by Alexis:
Refugees escape Lebanese clashes
BBC News
23/5/07
On Monday evening, the Lebanese cabinet authorised the army to step up its efforts and "end the terrorist phenomenon that is alien to the values and nature of the Palestinian people".
Olmert could learn a thing or two about how to handle these people. Also note the different meanings of the word martyr across religions. Not much doubt in my mind who gets the moral high ground. You get the feeling the average road accident in an Islamic country sends the martyr stats through the roof.
Lebanon ‘to strike out at terror group’
Metro
May 24, 2007
Islamic militants sheltering in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon can expect no mercy, government ministers in the capital Beirut vowed. 'We will work to root out and strike at terrorism, but we will embrace and protect our brothers in the camps,' prime minister Fuad Saniora said in a televised address to the nation.
His speech came after the Lebanese defence minister issued an ultimatum to the Fatah al-Islam militants barricaded in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp – many of whom are believed to be Arabs from other countries – to surrender or face a military assault.
The minister, Elias Murr, said: 'We have 27 martyrs from the army and there should be 270 killed or captured from the other side in order for the battle to be equal.'
The fighting, which broke out Sunday, has killed about 50 combatants and many civilians. A truce went into effect on Tuesday to allow thousands of civilians to escape the battles. Sporadic gunfire could be heard again.
Although Palestinian factions have dissociated themselves from Fatah al-Islam, many of the 400,000 Palestinian refugees in other camps across Lebanon were seething with anger over the army's artillery bombardment of Nahr al-Bared, raising fears that the violence could spread.
'You are our brothers,' Mr Saniora told Palestinian refugees in his TV address. 'We share with you the bad times before the good ones.' Mr Saniora said Fatah al-Islam was 'a terrorist organisation that claims to be Islamic and to defend Palestine'. It was 'attempting to ride on the suffering and the struggle of the Palestinian people', he added.
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Martyr - definition
A martyr is a person who is put to death or endures suffering because of a belief, principle or cause. The death of a martyr or the value attributed to it is called martyrdom. In different belief systems, the criteria for being considered a martyr is different. In the Christian context, a martyr is an innocent person who, without seeking death, IS murdered or put to death for his or her religious faith or convictions. An example is the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire. Christian martyrs sometimes decline to defend themselves at all, in what they see as an imitation of Jesus' willing sacrifice.
Islam accepts a much broader view of what constitutes a martyr, including anyone who dies in the struggle between those lands under Muslim government and those areas outside Muslim rule. Generally, some seek to include suicide bombers as a "martyr" of Islam, however, this is widely disputed in the Muslim community.
Ah well, better late than never.
Ehud Olmert Admits Unilateral Withdrawals a Failure
Daniel Pipes' Weblog
January 9, 2007
Surprise surprise, they're rearming and the UN isn't doing anything....
Hezbollah Can Launch 3,000 Rockets a Day Into Israel
The Trumpet
May 25, 2007
Italy to sell Lebanon sophisticated ground-to-air missiles
Debka
22/10/06
The Aster 15 will be accompanied by Italian instructors to guide Lebanese troops in their use. Since 50% of those officers are Shiites loyal to Hizballah or Amal, the Shiite terrorists are looking forward to gaining access for the first time to top-of-the-line Western anti-air missile technology.
Egypt blasts peacemakers for blaming recent violence on Palestinians
The Associated Press
31/5/07
Egypt blasted the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers on Thursday, saying it was blaming the Palestinians for the recent upsurge in fighting and sparing Israel any criticism.
The Quartet, which includes Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the EU, urged an end to fighting Wednesday between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, calling on the Palestinian government to do everything necessary to restore law and order.
Other bloggers noticed, as I did, the mismatch of picture and report here.
Oh, and the comment at the blog suggests the pic's a fake anyway.
'Free hand' for Lebanon army to hit militants
Telegraph
26/05/2007
Daily Telegraph's Editors Run For Cover
Backspin
May 26 2007
A couple of points to be made here. First, the brutal nature of the violence against civilians, including women and children, is exactly what's happening in Iraq (wonder why that could be).
Secondly, my level of sympathy with the killed Fatah commanders (see end of excerpt) corresponds roughly with my sympathy levels for SS soldiers sent to the gulags by the Russians. After all, they were not Jews either.
Hamas bids for total control
Telegraph
13/06/2007
Ahmed al Afifi, the Palestinian intelligence chief, nervously fingered a .45 pistol in his Gaza City home hours after it was hit with two Hamas mortars. The first round blew a crater in his driveway. The second, a dud, stuck in his flower bed like a garden ornament. "Hamas is trying to take control of everything," Mr Afifi said after the fighting had raged all night.
Hamas has been locked in a bloody power struggle with the rival Fatah party ever since it won a landslide parliamentary election in January last year. After months of on/off violence, the stalemate between the militant Islamists and the ousted Fatah moderates seemed destined to keep the Palestinian government paralysed.
Now, Hamas is pressing a fierce offensive in the Gaza Strip, systematically laying siege to the Fatah-dominated security services and looking at last for the decisive victory that could give it complete control of the Palestinian government.
...
"Stay at home and you will be safe," Hamas warned Fatah fighters in an announcement over a radio station. As reports poured in of Hamas victories across the war-torn territory, Fatah insisted that the tide would quickly turn once the order was given to launch a counter attack. Fatah's leaders said they were showing restraint in the hopes of avoiding a fully-fledged civil war.
"We are just waiting for the orders from our leaders and then we will vanquish Hamas and they will learn a lesson they will never forget," said a masked Fatah gunman who gave his name as Abu Abbas.
In the past 48 hours 19 Palestinians have been killed, tossed from rooftops, executed at point-blank range, and shot in hospital wards. That number seems certain to rise. More than 80 Palestinians have now been killed since mid May. Among yesterday's dead was a 14-year-old boy and three women, all killed in a Hamas attack on a Fatah security officer's home.
"They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station. Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.
Saw a Palestinian spokeswoman on the news tonight, blaming the internecine Palestinian violence on Israel and America ("for arming Fatah and Israel"). I have *never* seen this kind of bullshit challenged by an interviewer. It's not like you'd need a Paxman to reveal what a pile of crap this is, so why do they *always* get a free pass?
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Alexis spotted this one, commenting it's just amazing, isn't it? i mean, if i was in a cage or prison cell with you, i think we would cooperate in order to plan a way to get out of the cage, but not the good ol' Pals... and this guy is their FOREIGN MINISTER!!!
FM: Hamas rule in Gaza would undermine Israel-Abbas deals
Associated Press
13/06/07
Abu Amr blamed the recent deadly clashes between the groups on pressures imposed by outside forces. "If you have two brothers, put them in a cage and deprive them of basic and essential needs for life, they will fight," Abu Amr told a news conference in Tokyo.
Personally, I blame the Jews.
Gaza lurches towards Islamist mini-state
Times
14/06/07
In a symbolic moment, a large crowd of Gaza civilians demonstrating for an end to the internecine fighting came under fire from unidentified attackers who killed at least two marchers. ... The United Nations said that it would scale back its operations in Gaza after two of its Palestinian employees were killed and two others seriously wounded in crossfire.
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Now this *is* funny
Crucial Gaza security HQ falls to Hamas
Times
14/06/07
In Rafah, looters were seen moving in to steal from Fatah bases which had been overrun. At least one appeared to be one of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority security guards who had initially fled the post under Hamas attack.
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I've been waiting for people to start reminiscing about the good old days under Israeli occupation. I'd also like to fully endorse the "rats in a sack" analogy, that seems to sum up the moral standing of both sides pretty well.
The Israelis are forgotten – now war is with the enemy within
Times
June 14, 2007
What it is, unquestionably, is the latest symptom of a fragmented, dysfunctional society in which the waxing Islamist strain and waning secular brand of Palestinian nationalism are locked and loaded into the violent stage of a decades-old struggle for the soul of Palestine.
But kidnappings of combatants and journalists, enemies being thrown off roofs, gunmen surrounding the Presidential compound and RPGs being fired at the Prime Minister’s office highlight a level of internal instability that makes Gaza a different place from the one I first encountered in the opening days of the second intifada in October 2000.
Then Palestinian gravediggers were complaining that they had run out of cement. Then, as now, they are unlikely to run out of bodies. But back then they were burying the victims of Israeli-Palestinian warfare. Now it is Palestinian on Palestinian.
The other key difference is that back then it was possible for a journalist to stand in the middle of a Gaza cemetery without a second thought, interviewing civilians, politicians, pundits, or gunmen from Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP and Islamic Jihad without fear of kidnap.
For years Gaza, although unstable, was a place where you could have lunch with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, spend hours in the markets and streets talking to ordinary Gazans or even have an alcoholic drink over shrimps in a clay pot with secular Palestinian Authority officials at one of Gaza’s very pleasant beachfront restaurants.
No more, as the last – United Nations – bar finally went the way of Gaza’s cinemas, nightclubs and other entertainments deemed ’un-Islamist’ by any one of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the shadowy ’Army of Islam’ and other splinter groups that act either independently, or as fronts for the larger organizations.
Now it is much harder to work in the sealed-off coastal strip, with the threat of abduction by kidnappers – whether motivated by religion, politics, money or all three. There is also the threat of stray bullets, shells and grenades.
...
Palestinians blame decades of Israeli occupation for many of their woes, saying rats trapped in a sack will inevitably turn on each other. Israel blames the Palestinians for failing to take advantage of its historic 2005 withdrawal to turn Gaza into a showcase for a future Palestinian state.
And people continue, and will continue, to die, with few sanguine that a war in Gaza will stay in Gaza.
Another spot from Alexis. True in a way, after all if the Israelis hadn't pulled out of Gaza none of this would be happening, so it is their fault. Meanwhile I await with bated breath a headline along the lines of "Palestinian child stubs toe in 'Israel not to blame for something' shock".
Growing fear of West Bank retribution
BBC
14/6/07
Spilling onto the street where hawkers sell nuts and pears, shoes and shirts, the men all denounced the violence in Gaza. "This is all the work of Israeli hands," said one.
Very interesting point made by Coughlin, and one that ought to be put to the "it's the Israeli blockade's fault" brigade: The World Bank reported that donors contributed about £375 million to the Palestinian territories in 2006, twice the amount they received in 2005.
Fundamentalists threaten Israel from all sides
Con Coughlin
Telegraph
15/06/2007
Welcome to the new Islamic Republic of Hamas-stan, where every Palestinian woman is obliged to wear the veil and all traces of corrupting Western influences, from pop music to internet cafés, are strictly banned.
...
Even before this week's violence, activists had been busy attacking cafés, video shops and restaurants that serve alcohol or sell what are regarded as subversive Western films.
An internet café at the Jabaliyah refugee camp was bombed because zealots believed its customers might be exposed to pornography or pop music. The desire to enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic law even resulted in a gunman attacking a UN primary school because it allowed young boys and girls to mix together in the playground.
...
Hamas makes no secret of the fact that it now receives most of its financial and military support from Iran. The Iranian government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hamas leadership in June last year, in which it agreed to fund the militant group to the tune of £400 million.
Until then, most of the Palestinian Authority's funding came from the EU and America, but this dried up when Hamas came to power and refused to give up its long-standing policy of seeking Israel's destruction or to renounce its terrorist past.
In addition to financial support, Iran provides training to members of the military wing of Hamas by sending them to camps in Lebanon and Iran run by the elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards.
Past Iranian attempts to supply the Palestinians with military hardware have been less successful, with the Israeli navy intercepting a ship laden with explosives destined for Gaza in early 2002. But earlier this year, the Iranians sought to establish new supply lines to Gaza.
On February 24, Khaled Mashaal, Hamas's supreme leader, travelled to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, where he met senior Quds Force officials and Sudanese politicians who are broadly sympathetic to Hamas's political objectives.
The main topic of conversation was setting up a supply route that would enable Iran to smuggle rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles, guns and explosives through the porous border between Gaza and Egypt.
The dispute over tightening the border is now one of the issues at the heart of the current violence; Hamas refuses to countenance the deployment of an international force that would seriously curtail the activities of the arms and money smugglers who use a sophisticated network of tunnels to transport their contraband into Gaza.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners frequently claim that the main reason Gaza is in crisis is that the economic blockade imposed by America and Israel following Hamas's election victory has reduced the civilian population to penury. This was the essence of the argument advanced by Alvaro de Soto, until recently the UN's special co-ordinator for the Middle East, who seems happy to blame anyone for the Palestinians' plight except the Palestinians themselves.
Ordinary Palestinians, it is true, in both Gaza and the West Bank, are suffering hardship. But this is not because of a lack of funds entering the Palestinian territories: it is because successive Palestinian administrations have made no effort to distribute the resources available equably among the population.
Hamas, on the other hand, sees economic deprivation as a form of political oppression. The World Bank reported that donors contributed about £375 million to the Palestinian territories in 2006, twice the amount they received in 2005. But since taking power, Hamas ensures any funds are spent on Islamic causes and its 6,000-strong militia, leaving the majority to fend for themselves.
The bonus for Hamas is that, by forcing the majority of Palestinians to exist in dire poverty, it succeeds in attracting widespread sympathy from international do-gooders who do not understand the sadistic economic manipulation that is taking place.
Not surprisingly, many Palestinians who were previously agnostic about their Muslim heritage have found themselves embracing the Hamas cause, more out of economic necessity than religious obligation.
Hizbollah - another Iranian-funded militia - used similar tactics to establish its power base in southern Lebanon during the 1980s. Hizbollah, of course, has now become a dominant force in Lebanese politics.
Hamas is trying to replicate Hizbollah's success in Gaza, not a pleasing prospect for Israel, which now faces the threat of having two Iranian-backed, Islamic fundamentalist organisations dedicated to its destruction camped on its northern and southern borders. It is not a thought that will help Israelis sleep easy.
Prompted by a discussion with JP and Dan about the Peter Hitchens' report on Israel, I was curious to find out what Hitchens had written about the war in Lebanon. A quick search on his blog resulted in this entry, written at the time of the conflict:
'But how strange it is that people will persist in thinking that there are only two views on a subject, and that if you don't hold one, you must hold the other. I am accused of supporting New Labour because I condemn the Useless Tories, and here I am accused of agreeing with Tony Benn because I oppose Israeli methods in the Lebanon.
Now, I do have some admiration for Mr Benn because he thinks for himself, is an opponent of the EU and of attacks on English liberty. But we disagree completely about the Middle East. I am, as he is not, a Zionist. I do not believe in the 'two-state solution' which seems to me to be unworkable and wrong, nor do I believe in 'land for peace', which, to me, is another expression for appeasement through weakness.
My criticism of Israel is this. That I suspect a strong leader ( which Ehud Olmert is not ) would have refused to be provoked by the ambush and kidnapping on the Lebanese border. Terrorists operate by provoking their targets into over-reaction, and into starting wars they cannot possibly win. The only worthwhile victory for Israel in this war would be one that involved a renewed Israeli occupation up to the Litani river, the very arrangement Israel abandoned in 2000 and which i think is impossible now. No UN force would dare take on Hezbollah, and a buffer zone under UN control would quickly fill up with Hezbollah rocket sites once more. America and France have learned the hard way, by heavy casualties, that Western troops in Lebanon are more likely to be targets than enforcers.
Then there is the issue of proportion. I hate to agree with the liberals and the creepy foes of Israel who say that this war is 'disproportionate', but the fact that these people are what they are, doesn't mean they are wrong. I was against the bombing of Belgrade, and the bombing of Baghdad (unlike Jack Straw, who managed to stay in the government drawing a cabinet salary while these things were going on, and whose objections to Israeli bombing are therefore worthless whining).
I was against them because I have in recent years found out what aerial bombing actually does. I grew up in a Britain which cheerfully accepted that it was right to bomb Germany to rubble, because they had started it. I entirely agreed with this view for many years. Then I began to read the full details of what happened when our bombs fell. I was particularly struck by the repeated accounts of the mad women, made insane by the loss of their homes and families, who roamed about Germany carrying their dead babies in suitcases; also by the reports of adult human figures, baked in airless cellars for so long during the Dresden firestorm that they were shrunk to the size of children; and of the great clouds of bluebottles gathered over the ruins of Hamburg after an RAF raid, so devastating that there was nobody to clear the wreckage or bury the huge numbers of civilian dead beneath the rubble. We may not have known then. We certainly know now. This is not a form of warfare that a Christian country can use. By the way this does not even slightly reduce my admiration for the courage of the bomber crews, who were not responsible for the policy of area bombing, or aware of its true effects, and who faced (as most modern bomber pilots don't) serious opposition.
Our ancestors, my grandfather's generation, who grew up before 1914, would have regarded this sort of thing as barbaric and unthinkable. Genuine, terrible shock ran through the country when German warships bombarded Scarborough and Hartlepool, and when German airships and planes dropped bombs in British civilians. Quite right too. We should, in 1918, have banned aerial bombing of civilian areas by treaty and declared it a war crime. Instead, we began to do it ourselves notably in Iraq, because it was cheaper and easier than sending soldiers.
So if Israel wishes to go after targets in Lebanon, it must use soldiers to do so - something it is increasingly doing but which I don't think Mr Benn will support. Yes, this will lead to painful casualties among those soldiers, but - if you must have war - it is better that soldiers die than that women or children do. I might add that such operations will also be far more effective and accurate than the lazy and (these days) rather cowardly method of dropping high-explosive from the sky, while sitting in a near-invulnerable aeroplane.'
I agree with some of this, but by no means all.
Hitchens seems offended by the idea that "cowardly" aerial bombardment means the attacker suffers fewer casualties - you are "near invulnerable", which he implies is morally repugnant. Furthermore he encourages the Israelis to deliberately use tactics - ground fighting - that will increase their own losses.
The idea that by exposing or protecting your combat troops to risk per se you either increase or reduce the moral culpability of their actions is risible. The two simply have nothing to do with each other. If you don't accept the killing by shelling of innocent civilians, should you be any more inclined to accept it if they are hacked to death by machetes, which surely must expose the hacker to greater danger?
I detect in this something of the shrill "disproportionality" bollocks last year, where many people seemed to unthinkingly take the fact that fewer Israelis were dying as proof that they were being disproportionate, a nonsense argument that I attack elsewhere in this thread. As I have said before, it's not like people would have switched to backing the Israelis at the moment the kill ratios reached 1:1, and it's not like anyone excuses Hitler on the grounds that more Germans than British were killed in WW2.
And the idea that the Israelis would gain in the propaganda war by choosing tactics that expose their own side to greater danger in order to protect more of the enemy is an utter nonsense. The Israelis did exactly that (which I would have thought virtually unprecedented in the history of warfare) at Jenin, and were accused worldwide of war crimes for their pains. And the Arabs - Hizbollah as much as the PA - deliberately exploit this by siting their military assets in among the civilian population. So blame where it's due please, Peter.
Having said all that, I have considerable respect for P. Hitchens as an independent thinker and good writer. I wonder if he knows C. Hitchens?
By the way, the Israeli's should have made more use of ground troops, but only because that's the way to defeat Hizbollah.
And there's great commentary on WW2 bombing (along with much else) in the brilliant book I'm just finishing, Niall Ferguson's War of The World.
If you really don't know already, Peter and Christopher Hitchens are brothers.
I've argued before that Israel should/possibly must be a secular state, and not a Jewish state, if it is to 'work'. I argue the same about the UK, btw...
My prinicple rejection of Peter Hitchens (and some of JPs arguments) is the sense that things which are and have been must always be and so there's no point/propsect of change.
For example, the clan-based stuff in Arab culture... er, we did go in for that sort of thing in Western Europe too. Even as recently as the 18th century, there were caln-driven conflicts on this island.
But just take a tour of the last 140 years in the British isles... the 1867 reform act is the start of the principle of universal democracy, and even then its not until the late 1920s (aka living memory) that the principle universal, gender-equal franchise enters British law. And Ireland has gone from being terrorist-driven nationalistic rebel hotbed, to fully fledged independent nation-state, within that timeframe. Again, (just) within living memory, Britain executed Irish nationalists for daring to proclaim the right of self-determination within the (then) British state.
Hitchens 'its always been like that you'll never change it' attitude explains/underpins his deepseated parochial conservatism and is demonstrably based on a false premise. Which is why, even if/when his historical narrative is spot on, the analsys and conclusions he draws are misguided (bordering on bonkers)
How can any right-thinking person back Hizbollah over Israel?
The Girls of the Israeli Defense Forces
Maxim
Regarding Peter Hitchens on the war in Lebanon I find his criticisms harder to dismiss.
During the conflict I was supportive of Israel and didn't question the methods they employed. This was quite an instinctive reaction as I didn't have much respect for most of Israel's critics and found the motives of many of them extremely suspect. I was also persuaded by Olmert's assertions that this was an existential battle and that Israel couldn't stop until Hezbollah had been eliminated as a threat.
However, I began to doubt the wisdom of Israel's methods when Olmert suddenly declared a cease-fire and at a stroke undermined his arguement that this was an existential battle for survival (otherwise why declare a cease-fire without achieving your stated aims).
A couple of points on the Hitchens article:
On that word 'disproportional' again: I think Hitchens is saying that Israel's response was a disproportionate relative to the original inciting incident, not that there should be a proportionate number of casualties on either side.
JP you argued that "If you don't accept the killing by shelling of innocent civilians, should you be any more inclined to accept it if they are hacked to death by machetes, which surely must expose the hacker to greater danger?" BUT I think Hitchens is saying that ground troops would have put fewer innocent civilians at risk.
Some clarification:
* Olmert cocked almost everything up, he is a dick
* my 'machete' example is aimed at Hitchens' comments about it being cowardly to kill by plane, as if choosing tactics to minimize attackers' casualties were wrong per se
Regarding Joe's comments on Peter Hitchens, I agree with some of his points but still think the 'bonkers' slur is unfair and tiresome.
Yes, Hitchens is conservative. His solutions to many of today's problems is to return to the policies of the past. Personally, I think his proposals are often unrealistic/naive - e.g we're not going to bring back the 11+ and Grammar schools. However, I think it's a real mistake to say his analysis and conclusions are always misguided. Who knows history may judge that Peter Hitchens was right about the invasion of Iraq and his brother Christopher wrong.
However, I think it's a real mistake to say his analysis and conclusions are always misguided.
I think misguided is exactly the right word. I didn't say his conclusions are always wrong. I do believe most sincerely that his
'conservatism' - in the sense of his almost pathological belief in the irredemability and unchangeability of cultures/peoples/humanity... 'conservatism in the sense that the past was always better and change is never good... or even that change for the better is an oxymoron... is a fundamentally flawed premise, and as such his analysis is always guided by an ideological perspective that is fundamentally incorrect... i.e. misguided.... even when his conclusions are those I happen to agree with 'despite' how he got there.
Lebanon 'bomb' kills UN soldiers
BBC
24/06/07
At least five soldiers serving with the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (Unifil) have died when their vehicle was hit by an explosive device. Three of the dead were originally from Colombia, two from Spain, the Spanish defence minister said. They were the first Spanish casualties in Lebanon. Three other Spaniards were injured in the incident near Israel's border.
No-one has admitted responsibility. Spain's defence minister has said it was a "premeditated attack". Radical groups in Lebanon have threatened to attack peacekeepers. For the last five weeks, the Lebanese army has been battling militants from the Fatah al-Islam group.
Authorities have said that Fatah al-Islam militants who have been arrested and interrogated have confessed there was a plan to attack the UN, says the BBC's Kim Ghattas in Beirut. The militants are said to be inspired by al-Qaeda.
Hamas threatens suicide attack, reveals Egyptian and Palestinian intelligence knew all about arms smuggling tunnels
Debka
June 23, 2007
A week after assuming sole mastery of the Gaza Strip, Hamas is bent on further stoking military tensions ahead of the Sharm al-Sheikh conference Monday, June 25. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has invited Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and the defeated Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to talk about the crisis created by the takeover which the Egyptian president angrily called “an illegal coup.”
The Islamist group is satisfied that none of the four will resort to military action to upend its putsch. After all, Cairo could have massed troops on its border with Gaza – with the silent encouragement of the US and Israel – and slapped down a 48-hour ultimatum for Hamas to hand over the usurped Palestinian ruling institutions, or else be forced out by Egyptian guns. But Hamas knows that, just as Israel opted to keep its powder dry, so too has Cairo. Therefore, Hamas in Gaza is pressing its advantage, taking a leaf out of Yasser Arafat’s manual whereby every diplomatic move - conference, peace effort or mediation - occasioned a campaign of terror against Israel.
More violence is therefore promised on top of Hamas’ daily Qassam missile and mortar attacks on Israeli civilians and border forces. Fatah is now added to the list of targets, according to Hamas extremist Mahmoud a-Zahar in an interview with Der Spiegel Saturday, June 23.
Alongside the threat of violence, Hamas released Saturday a batch of documents captured in the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence archives in Gaza, which include complete maps in the hands of the Palestinian Preventive Security service and Egyptian intelligence of 22 gunrunning tunnels from Sinai to Gaza. Exes marked the points of ingress and exit under cover of buildings.
This incriminating expose attesting to the two governments’ deliberate inaction in preventing the Hamas military build-up is important on three counts:
1. Hamas is abreast of the secret information in the possession of Egyptian and Palestinian Authority intelligence, and can make the necessary adjustments for keeping the smuggling routes running.
2. Israel was talking to the wall when its ministers kept on appealing to the Mubarak government year after year to block the smuggling tunnels. It is clear that Cairo never had an intention of lifting a finger to stop the illicit weapons reaching Gaza and Hamas arsenals. Will Olmert keep up the charade at Sharm al-Sheikh?
3. Since Egyptian intelligence and Mahmoud Abbas’ security services had precise knowledge of 22 tunnels at least, how come this information was never obtained by Israeli intelligence?
An outrage. Not much about it in the news though.
Palestinian rocket kills Gaza children
The Age
August 7, 2007
A rocket fired at Israel by Palestinian militants fell short and killed two Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, ambulance crews say. No group claimed responsibility for launching the rocket, which landed near the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, killing a seven-year-old boy and a girl, aged 9.
Looks like it was a moving tribute to a founder of modern terrorism in that paradise on Earth that is Gaza. And now the US wants the West Bank to follow suit. Oh dear...
Deadly clash at Arafat Gaza rally
12 November 2007
BBC News
At least six people have died in gunfire at a rally in Gaza City organised by Fatah to mark three years since the death of Yasser Arafat. The violence occurred when Fatah supporters began taunting Hamas police and throwing stones, witnesses said. The Hamas security forces reportedly responded by firing towards the crowd.
Gaza violence shows worsening divide
12 November 2007
BBC News
The violence during the third anniversary of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's death illustrates the deadly tensions between the two main Palestinian political factions. Six Palestinians were killed and dozens other injured as clashes broke out between Hamas and Fatah supporters at the Gaza memorial. Both sides laid the blame for the violence at each other's door.
I thought I'd put this here with other allegations of media fraud. Everyone keep an eye out for the court's eventual judgement.
Intifada image tested in France
Marcel Berlins
The Guardian
Monday November 19 2007
Seven years ago, television footage of Muhammad al-Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, cowering behind his father before being killed by Israeli army bullets, shocked viewers all over the world and became a potent symbol for the Palestinian intifada. Last week, in a courtroom in Paris, French appeal judges watched 18 minutes of a hitherto unseen film of the same incident. They will now have to decide whether the whole tragic scene was dishonestly edited and reported by the television channel France 2. The issue has reached court because the channel and Charles Enderlin, its reporter, sued a French lawyer, Philippe Karsenty, for libel, over his accusation of, in effect, fakery. Last year, a court ruled against Karsenty; the result of his appeal will be announced in February.
It is not the first time the circumstances of the shooting have been disputed. At first, the Israeli authorities admitted that they had shot the boy, and apologised. After an inquiry, they claimed it was "plausible" that he was killed by a stray Palestinian bullet. Karsenty's allegations go further, and raise the possibility - backed by the 18 minutes of raw footage shown last week - that Muhammad might not have died at all.
Debunking Al-Dura
Info Israel
By Mike Fegelman
Dubbed as Palestinian street theatre and the new face of Pallywood, the saga of Mohammed al-Dura continues in a Paris courtroom and illustrates the devastating power that images can have. Still celebrated as a “martyr” in the Arab streets and referenced by Osama Bin Laden following the 9/11 terror attacks, the image of Mohammed Al-Dura resonates as both infamous and iconic, and one of the worst modern blood libels waged against Israel.
Yet despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel was not responsible for firing the bullets that hit al-Dura, and incredulity as to the credibility of the footage taken from the scene by France 2, this vicious slander continues unabated.
To their credit, the National Post and columnist David Frum were the first and only Canadian news media to address “L’affaire Al-Dura”. Frum's column explores the trial of Phillipe Karsenty (founder of the French online media watchdog, Media Ratings, who accused France 2 of staging the Al-Dura ‘killing’) vs. Charles Enderlin (France 2 journalist who subsequently accused Karsenty of defamation).
According to Frum: "I want to tell you about a forgery. The forgers intended to incite hatred against Jews and the state of Israel and to a great extent, they have succeeded. The forgery is a 55-second film clip that purports to show the shooting death of a 12-year-old boy at a Gaza crossroads after a Palestinian irregular attack on an Israeli blockhouse. The clip was broadcast on France's TV 2 on Sept. 30, 2000, and narrated by one of France's best known television journalists, Charles Enderlin.. Yet evidence has been gathering for years that the al-Dura shooting was entirely staged:
The 55-seconds are not a continuous sequence, but are made up of six distinct pieces, crudely spliced together. There is no shot of the boy actually being hit, nor is there any sign of blood. Nor does the father make any move toward his son. The crowd in the background cries out that the boy is dead before he falls over. Although the boy was supposed to have been hit in the stomach, his hands are shown covering his eyes. Video of the incident taken by other photographers shows passersby walking unconcernedly between the crouching al-Duras and the Israeli post from which the bullets were supposedly fired.
Although TV2 claims to have 27 minutes of raw footage of the shooting, it has persistently refused to make the footage available to the public. Even now, with the matter in litigation, TV2 has failed to provide the courts with the raw material from which its broadcast clip was assembled."
Canadian Media Disseminated Dubious Dura Footage:
Like the broader international media, Canadian reporters and news organizations gave substantial news coverage to the Al-Dura affair seven years ago. While some media outlets gave prominence to the story and featured original news coverage, content and commentary, other media outlets replicated wire stories, photos, and opinion pieces, spreading this forgery to a Canadian audience from coast-to-coast.
On 27 Feb. 2008, a French appellate court is set to rule on whether to uphold or overturn a French court’s ruling of slander against Karsenty.
A barrage against Israel
The Times
January 31, 2008
Robin Shepherd
The critics had another field day yesterday. But their arguments are dishonest
Yesterday's publication of the Winograd report into Israel's prosecution of the 2006 campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon provides a new opportunity for commentators to demonstrate their capacity for sober, balanced analysis. They will note the criticisms directed against Ehud Olmert, Israel's Prime Minister, while lauding the report as a display of democratic accountability unthinkable in any other country in the Middle East. Never failing to see the bigger picture, they will carefully weigh the options faced by a democracy under fire from some of the dangerous people on the planet.
Forget it. Most commentators, of course, will do nothing of the sort. Such is the obsessive desire to beat the Jewish state with any stick available, we should prepare for yet more moral inversion and wilful distortion. To get a sense of the sheer irrationality of the anti-Israeli polemicists, it is worth looking at recents events in Gaza.
Apologists for extremism had long argued that occupation rather than ideology was the “root cause” of terrorism. Terrorism would therefore cease once occupation ended. That argument has now been conclusively defeated. Since Israel withdrew, Palestinian militants have fired more than 4,000 rockets from Gaza at Israeli civilian targets.
Now, there is not a state in the world that could ignore this kind of barrage. So what were the options? One was reoccupation. Another was to carpet-bomb the areas from which the rockets are being fired. Many states would have done both. Israel has done neither.
What has Israel actually done? First, it has built a barrier around Gaza to limit the ability of suicide bombers to kill civilians. Secondly, it makes incursions to target the terrorist infrastructure. Thirdly, it has restricted imports into Gaza to stop bomb-making equipment from getting to the terrorists in aid and food packages. Fourthly, it has applied economic sanctions against the Hamas regime. Israel, in other words, has chosen the strategy least likely to cause heavy loss of life while still exercising its right to self-defence.
The condition of the residents of Gaza is dire. But ultimate blame for this surely rests with Hamas, other militants and the culture of violence in Palestinian society that sustains them. In the absence of all this there would, of course, be no security barrier, no military incursions, no trade restrictions and no sanctions.
In the topsy-turvy world of British and European commentary, however, reasoned argument is cast aside. The frenzied, rhetorical onslaught against the Jewish state is at best intellectually lazy. At worst it forms part of a hateful agenda that shames those who indulge in it.
Robin Shepherd, a senior fellow at Chatham House, is writing a book on European attitudes to Israel
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Ehud Olmert survives inquiry into failed war on Lebanon militia
From The Times
January 31, 2008
Israel’s once-mighty army was criticised heavily for its failure to secure a clear victory in the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in a report released last night by a high-ranking government panel.
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, who has weathered calls to resign over his wartime leadership, appeared to have dodged the bullet again when the panel described his decision to launch a costly ground offensive in the final days of the war as “practically essential”.
Justice Eliyahu Winograd, who headed the committee of investigation, reserved his most scathing criticism for the military leadership, which he said relied too heavily on air power and then, when it unleashed ground forces on southern Lebanon, “did not achieve any military objectives”.
Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, chief of staff then, has already resigned, as has Amir Peretz, the former Defence Minister.
Justice Winograd said that “both the Prime Minister and Defence Minister acted from the point of view that what they decided was in the interest of the state of Israel”. He added: “The decision to launch the ground operation was within the framework of decision makers’ diplomatic and professional judgment based on the information they had available.”
The army’s lack of preparedness and its inability to crush the Hezbollah militia, which continued firing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel until the end of the 33-day conflict, “had far-reaching consequences for us and our enemies”, Justice Winograd said. “Israel embarked on a prolonged war that it initiated, which ended without a clear Israeli victory from a military standpoint,” the retired judge told a packed press conference in Jerusalem. “A quasi-military organisation withstood the strongest army in the Middle East for weeks.”
The much-anticipated, 500-page report examined Israel’s conduct towards Hezbollah and Lebanon dating back to the Jewish state’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. It was shown to Mr Olmert an hour before its findings were made public.
Justice Winograd did point to “serious failures” in how the political and military leaderships interacted during the war — a conflict that he described as “a great and grave missed opportunity”. While emphasising that the fault for this “lies mostly with the military”, he did note the “weakness projected by the political echelon”.
An aide to Mr Olmert said that the Prime Minister would not step down as a result of the report, as many of his critics — including former reservist soldiers and bereaved military families — had hoped.
Hezbollah, which triggered the blistering conflict by ambushing an Israeli army patrol in July 2006, killing three soldiers and capturing two, was quick to cry victory after the report was released, saying that “the Israeli Army suffered a military defeat at the hands of Hezbollah”.
Ehud Barak, the current Defence Minister of Israel, had threatened to lead his Labour party out of government and bring down the ruling coalition once the full report was published. Analysts deemed that unlikely, as Labour’s right-wing rivals, Likud, would probably win a snap election.
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The Winograd Report in full
Independent
31 January 2008
It's worth seeing the video (included in the article below).
Hamas TV's 'Jew-eating' cuddly bunny
Metro
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
A toy rabbit is being used on TV by Hamas to encourage Palestinian children to take up arms against Israelis. The Islamist movement has broadcast a show with a character called Assud The Bunny who vows to 'eat Jews' for 'the sake of our homeland.' A child presenter also features on the programme, shown on Palestinian TV station al-Aqsa, who tells the rabbit that soldiers are ready to liberate the network 'from the filth of those Zionists'.
The show has been condemned by the Israeli embassy and by the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to Britain, said: 'It is tragic to see Palestinian children brainwashed into a pointless, destructive mindset.' He accused Hamas of 'starving its children of hope' and 'force feeding them a diet of hatred'.
Lorna Fitzsimons, head of the BICRC, added: 'I am sickened by this blatant glorification of violence and ultimately the brutalisation of Palestinian children. 'This reveals Hamas' truest colours – a terrorist organisation that is unwilling to negotiate and committed to the destruction of Israel.'
Hamas took control of Gaza last summer and is the biggest party in Palestine's unity government. The Palestinian embassy was unavailable for comment.
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more discussion
Do you think media studies students get essay questions like:
10 marks: Read this article, list who died, when & how
20 marks: Assess the criteria for rating the significance of some deaths over others. Which factors rate highest - who was killed, who did the killing, the reason for the killing etc... (hint: bear in mind that the most important deaths will appear in the headline and beginning of the article, the least important are buried in the middle or added as a virtual footnote at the end)
Intensified Israeli attacks on Gaza kill child footballers
The Guardian,
Friday February 29 2008
This in from the Karsenty case mentioned above:
Independent expert: IDF bullets didn't kill Mohammed al-Dura
Haaretz
02/03/2008
A report presented to a French court last week by an independent ballistics expert maintains that the death of Mohammed al-Dura, a Palestinian child seen being shot in the Gaza Strip during the first days of the intifada in September 2000, could not have been the result of Israeli gunfire, corroborating claims that the shocking footage was doctored.
The ballistics expert, Jean-Claude Schlinger, presented his conclusions after reviewing the footage, which shows Dura and his father cowering by a wall after being caught in the crossfire between Palestinian gunmen and Israel Defense Forces soldiers at the Netzarim junction.
The case revolves around a libel suit brought by the France 2 television channel and its Middle East correspondent, Charles Enderlin, against Phillipe Karsenty. On November 22, 2004 Karsenty wrote on his Web site, Media Ratings, that Dura's death had been staged and that France 2's conduct "disgraces France and its public broadcasting system."
A few weeks later France 2 and Enderlin sued him for libel. In October 2006 Karsenty was found guilty and was required to pay symbolic damages of 1 euro (and 3,000 euros in court costs). Karsenty appealed. The judge asked to examine all of the film footage in the report of the shooting before rendering a verdict. On Saturday, Enderlin rejected Schlinger's findings, arguing that "only partial evidence was given to him for evaluation."
In his report, Schlinger wrote, "If Jamal [the boy's father] and Mohammed al-Dura were indeed struck by shots, then they could not have come from the Israeli position, from a technical point of view, but only from the direction of the Palestinian position."
He also wrote, "In view of the general context, and in light of many instances of staged incidents, there is no objective evidence that the child was killed and his father injured. It is very possible, therefore, that it is a case [in which the incident was] staged." Schlinger confirmed these statements in a telephone conversation with Haaretz.
Schlinger has served as an adviser on ballistic and forensic evidence in French courts for 20 years. In his examination, he recreated the incident emphasizing the angle from which the shots could have been fired, the types of injuries and the types of weapons used by the IDF and the Palestinians. According to his report, there is no evidence that the boy was wounded in his right leg or in his abdomen, as was originally reported.
Regarding the injuries reportedly suffered by the father, Schlinger wrote that "If the injuries are genuine, they could not have occurred at the time of the events that television channel France 2 reported." Regarding the angle of the shots, Schlinger wrote, "Assuming that the shots came from the Israeli position, only the lower limbs could have been hit, because the rest of the body was protected by the house at the location."
This is the first time that an independent ballistics expert, not representing the State of Israel, undertook to examine Karsenty's claims.
The Price of Israel-Bashing
FrontPageMagazine.com
March 03, 2008
“70 Palestinians Killed in IDF Operation in Gaza.” “IDF Kills Palestinian Teen.” Those aren’t recent headlines from Al Jazeera’s website or even from the New York Times, but from ynetnews.com, English website of Israel’s own largest daily Yediot Aharonot.
One could imagine instead “IDF Hits Weapons Labs, Terrorist Leaders” with subsequent information in the article about civilian casualties—which are, after all, a feature of every war, and especially those waged in built-up areas against terrorist organizations that purposely take refuge among the populace.
Instead, since Israel began stepped-up operations against Gaza terror in response to round-the-clock shelling of Sderot, Ashkelon, and other Israeli communities, most of the Israeli English-language sites have been showing their “Israel kills Palestinians” bona fides. It brings in more readers than dull stuff about weapons depots and shows that the Israeli media keep pace with the rest of the world in Palestinian chic.
...
The UN Security Council said it was “deeply concerned about the loss of civilian life in southern Israel and Gaza and condemn[s] the escalation of violence. These events underscore the need for all parties to immediately cease all acts of violence.” A good deal harsher was UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon who thundered, “While recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself, I condemn the disproportionate and excessive use of force that has killed and injured so many civilians, including children. I call on Israel to cease such attacks.”
The European Union weighed in with “The [EU] presidency condemns the recent disproportionate use of force by the Israeli Defense Forces against [the] Palestinian population in Gaza and urges Israel to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from all activities that endanger civilians. Such activities are contrary to international law.” As for the Arab world, an apt example was Olmert’s peace partner Abbas’s statement that the IDF’s Gaza action was “worse than the Holocaust.”
All this was of course de rigueur and predictable as clockwork; did it matter that the usual world bodies and Israel-bashers were confusing attacker and defender, night and day, black and white, equating a democracy with a terror organization, standing morality on its head with the usual mix of cynicism and idiocy? How much it actually does matter was evident in another news item on Sunday.
It turns out that Jean-Claude Schlinger, an independent ballistics expert, has told a French court that the bullets that supposedly killed Mohammed al-Dura on September 30, 2000, “could not have been the result of Israeli gunfire, corroborating claims that the shocking footage was doctored.”
...
This exposure of a twenty-first-century anti-Jewish blood libel is of course both very welcome and very late now that the Al-Dura story has been put to such murderous use. Official Israel, which underreacted to the al-Dura affair and passively allowed the calumny to spread, will hopefully pursue its “information” efforts more seriously now that another confrontation has erupted in Gaza with Israel again portrayed as ruthless killer.
I loved this, this crosses the line several times into comedy. I particularly love the Orwellian way that the Israelis are still in occupation of Gaza despite their withdrawal from it. I also note, just as in the Lebanon war, the obsession with casualty ratios as a means of proving moral right. The straighter you fire, the wronger you are, it seems. And of course the derisory quote marks round the idea that Hamas rockets were the "starting point" for all this. And the piece de resistance - the idea that Israel can end hostilities with Hamas by giving it what it wants.
NB - there are some good comments following the article.
To blame the victims for this killing spree defies both morality and sense
Seumas Milne
The Guardian,
Wednesday March 5 2008
The attempt by western politicians and media to present this week's carnage in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate act of Israeli self-defence - or at best the latest phase of a wearisome conflict between two somehow equivalent sides - has reached Alice-in-Wonderland proportions.
...
...[A]t the height of the intifada, from 2000 to 2005, four Palestinians were killed for every Israeli; in 2006 it was 30; last year the ratio was 40 to one. In the three months since the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference at Annapolis, 323 Palestinians have been killed compared with seven Israelis, two of whom were civilians.
But the US and Europe's response is to blame the principal victims for a crisis it has underwritten at every stage. In interviews with Palestinian leaders over the past few days, BBC presenters have insisted that Palestinian rockets have been the "starting point" of the violence, as if the occupation itself did not exist. ... Like any other people, the Palestinians have the right to resist occupation - or to self-defence - whether they choose to exercise it or not. In spite of Israel's disengagement in 2005, Gaza remains occupied territory, both legally and in reality.
...
What else can Israel do to stop the rockets, its supporters ask. The answer could not be more obvious: end the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and negotiate a just settlement for the Palestinian refugees, ethnically cleansed 60 years ago - who, with their families, make up the majority of Gaza's 1.5 million people. All the Palestinian factions, including Hamas, accept that as the basis for a permanent settlement or indefinite end of armed conflict. In the meantime, agree a truce, exchange prisoners and lift the blockade. Israelis increasingly seem to get it - but the grim reality appears to be that a lot more blood is going to have to flow before it's accepted in Washington.
"In spite of Israel's disengagement in 2005, Gaza remains occupied territory, both legally and in reality."
While you mock this comment as Orwellian, it's bloody true mate.
Occupied legally, in that it is not a sovereign state, and in realitiy, in that the movement of peoples and access to basic functions and utilities is controlled by Israel.
Gaza is no more or less free than Bhopatutswana was under apartheid. IE not at all.
That DOESN'T mean I agree with Seamus Milne. I think Israel has every right to defend itself. But don't let that cloud your consideration of the points made.
Here's Peter Hitchens with a pessimistic piece on Gaza and the Middle East deal:
Gaza proves that any Middle East deal will fail
'Israel's latest assault on Gaza, in which innocents predictably died and Israel's reputation was predictably wounded yet again, is rather typical of that country's current inadequate government. It is given to showy but ultimately worthless violent responses to provocation, like the counter-productive Lebanon war. This will not stop rockets landing on Israel, and Ehud Olmert knows it.
It is now some years since Ariel Sharon forced the Israeli settlers out of Gaza and handed it over to Palestinian control. Nobody can be sure what this cunning, bloodstained old monster was up to when he did this - some believed that the West Bank was next , and that only Sharon's stroke prevented him from astonishing the world by pulling out of that too.
I doubt it. But he might well have pulled out of large chunks of the disputed territories. By the way, I call them that because their ownership is much more complex than most people believe. There wasn't ever an independent Arab State called 'Palestine', as some seem to think. This parcel of territory was the site of one of the last imperial land-grabs in modern history. There were no independent countries in what is now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria before 1917. The whole area was part of the slovenly, decaying Ottoman Empire whose administrative borders bore no relation to anything now in existence. Jews and Arabs (many of the Arabs being Christian) had lived there under Ottoman rule since time immemorial.
The whole of British Mandate Palestine, originally including the Golan Heights and all of what is now Jordan was once officially open to Jewish settlement. Then the Golan was given to the French ( who later passed it on to independent Syria) and the land East of the Jordan was given to the Emirate of TransJordan, and incidentally closed to Jews, as it still is. The story of how this came about is most interesting and little-known, and involves shifty British manoeuvring in Syria and Iraq. I urge you to see if you can find out what happened, since it is left out of many accounts of the dispute and is in some ways quite funny, though the outcome has been tragic enough to stifle the laughter.My experience is that almost everybody has strong opinions on the Israel dispute, but hardly anybody has any clue about how it came to pass.
The 'West Bank' and Gaza were then seized (illegally) by Arab armies in 1948, in their war to prevent the establishment of Israel, following the Arab rejection of the 1947 United Nations partition plan. Britain was one of very few countries which recognised the annexation of the West Bank by TransJordan (which then quite reasonably became 'Jordan'). It was this annexed territory that Israel conquered in 1967. So who really has the right to govern this land? I mention this only to make clear that it is more complicated than the BBC and the other pro-Arab news organisations tend to make out. If it were as simple as they say, there could be a solution tomorrow. Alas, it isn't, and there won't be.
But back to Gaza. Gaza now has, technically, what its inhabitants are supposed to want - independence from Israel. But this has not in any way changed the fact that the main political purpose of the main political movement in Gaza is - the destruction of Israel by demoralisation, and by taking away its international reputation and legitimacy, a process well advanced. Hence the constant rocket attacks on Israel, launched from Gaza. The rocketeers are positively hoping to madden the Israelis into retaliation.
And I think I can guarantee to you that, if Israel tomorrow withdrew from all, or most of the disputed territories, leaving them entirely self-governing - and even if it somehow provided a secure communication (which many West Bank Arabs, far from keen on their compatriots in Gaza, wouldn't want) between the territories and Gaza, there would be the same response. Rockets would be launched, week in, week out, night and day, from the territories into Israel. Get a map and you will see that this would mean most of the urban populated areas of Israel, including its only major airport, would be within range of such attack. It is hard to see how that could be sustained for long.
This is not some complaint against Palestinian ingratitude etc. The Palestinian Arabs have absolutely nothing to be grateful for, from anyone. The Palestinian Arabs for the most part are like everyone else in the world, decent people caught up in a quarrel they cannot control, who long for peace just as any other normal person does. But, long for it as they may, they do not live in freedom (which is why the banners calling for a 'Free Palestine' are such a joke. Life under the rule of Fatah or Hamas is not free or ever likely to be. The Palestinian Authority was being criticised for malpractice by Amnesty International before it ever became a state, a unique achievement). Dissent against Fatah or Hamas is very bad for your health. However much you might want the fighting to stop, it would be deadly dangerous to protest against the use of your rooftop or your courtyard to fire a Kassam rocket at Sderot.
The Palestinians live in squalor, six decades after their wrongful expulsion from Israel, because their squalor is good propaganda for the Arab cause - do you really think that the Arab Muslim world, with all its oil wealth, could not in the last 60 years have afforded to rehouse the refugees like princes if it had wanted to? It has preferred war, on principle. It does not believe that a Jewish state should exist on what it regards as Arab, Muslim land. Jews are welcome to live there as second-class citizens ( as they did before the Ottomans fell). But they are not welcome to run a state, however small, or (above all) control its borders and permit Jewish immigration.
Palestinian Nationalism is a strange thing. Its spokesmen say endlessly they want a state, but do they really, except possibly for an interim period? My guess is that, if Israel ceased to exist the whole area would rapidly be absorbed into a 'Greater Syria' probably run from Damascus. Yasser Arafat himself declared that he did not want to be 'Mayor of Jericho' - by which he meant that - as the embattled leader of a great Arab cause he was a big, powerful and important man, but if he got his supposed objective and became chief of a tiny, barely viable Palestinian nation he would just be the insignificant leader of a powerless, impoverished new nation. The purpose of the Arab political movement in both Gaza and the disputed territories is not the establishment of a Palestinian State alongside Israel. It is the demoralisation, discrediting and at length the abolition of the Jewish State.
Giving up Gaza, it seems to me, has showed that beyond all doubt. Until the latest foolish incursion by the dim Mr Olmert, there hasn't been an Israeli soldier or settler in Gaza for years. Yet the continuing purpose of the Hamas-run Arab authorities in Gaza has been to keep alive the conflict with Israel (and to a lesser extent with their Fatah rivals in Ramallah). Here was an opportunity to build, with aid from the outside world, a peaceful, orderly and eventually prosperous city-state on the sea, an example of what Arabs could do in the region given the chance. But, as always in this story, the 'struggle' against Israel was more important to those in charge. Grasp that, and you will see why this and every other concession of 'Land for Peace' leads nowhere. I see no reason for any hope at all in this beautiful, sad region.'
Stumbled on this while looking for something else. It's the comments page from an article in the Indy, "Massacre In Jerusalem"
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/03/have-your-say-m.html#comments
Re: Wembley's point and the semantics of occupation; you may argue that Gaza is not free (I would agree and happily blame Hamas for most of that), but I don't think you can call it 'occupied' in the absence of occupation forces.
Very impressed with Andy's P.Hitchens article.
Peter Hitchens responds to readers comments on his Gaza blog post:
"The reaction to the short piece on Gaza was disappointing. I am, as I think is fairly well known, a strong supporter of Israel's right to exist and a sceptic of much of the Palestinian propaganda. And I thought I had been pretty critical of the Israeli government.
But 'Grant', yes him again, was more interested in name-calling than in discussion.
The only hope in this conflict is compromise. Israel has been repeatedly willing to do so. The Arab side (not necessarily the Arab people, who have little say in the matter) hasn't.
However much one may wish to say that both sides have done dreadful wrongs, and they have, this is the crucial difference between the two. And the continued efforts, by the USA and the EU to split the difference and engineer futile 'land-for-peace' swaps, only encourage the Arabs who see each Israeli 'compromise' as a step towards their unaltered objective, the end of Israel.
A firm insistence by the major powers that Israel was here to stay, that there would be no more 'land for peace' (or 'appeasement' as it was known when Neville Chamberlain did it) and the refugee problem needed to be solved for good, might just persuade the Arabs that they needed to compromise too.
Not much hope of that, but are there any better options?
Guy Reid Brown is a bit confused about the Golan Heights, which were taken by Israel (in one of the most astonishing military operations of modern times) in 1967, and are now under Israeli control.
Syria does not nowadays permit attacks on Israel from its own territory, fearing retaliation. But Arabs have continued to lob rockets across the Lebanese border, not far away.
No government is really responsible for Southern Lebanon, so retaliation is harder (as Israel found in its war with Hezbollah).
Penny Russell says "The Arabs were not expelled from the newly created Israel - rather, they were exhorted to leave by the surrounding Arab countries preparatory to the latter's first war against Israel. Blackmail might be a better term since it was clear that the victorious aggressors would have little time for any recalcitrants."
This was for many years the official Israeli line, but Israel's own revisionist historians have now exploded it as false, and I really don't think there is any doubt of that. And there is no excusing, or covering up the massacre at Deir Yassin (or the use of terror against Britain by the Stern Gang) .
I think the radio broadcasts probably were made as well (though it's hard to get chapter and verse), and it's plain that in some areas, notably Haifa and Nazareth, local Israelis actively encouraged their Arab neighbours to stay.
Even so, many Arabs were undoubtedly driven from their homes by Israeli action, and it is important that Israel and its supporters recognise this truth."
Melanie Phillips comments pithily on the Karsenty case (see above) and the Israeli government's pathetic performance, standing idly by as another Jewish blood libel spreads unchallenged around the world.
The war against the Jews (9)
Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
10th March 2008
On the Karsenty case, there's a good report in Haaretz.
Regarding Melanie Phillips blog, I don't think she does herself any favours in appearing to generalize about 'The Arabs' and a Global Arab Conspiracy in a way she would find utterly appalling (rightly) if it was applied to Jews (please correct me if you think I've misread her).
Here's a good example of what I mean:
"This is connected to its wider inability to grasp the central strategic importance to the Arabs of such blood libels and a multitude of other fabrications which they use to inspire hatred of Israel around the world. So important is it to turn the world against Israel that the Arabs will sacrifice their own children to do so, as happened in Gaza last week."
* A great post from Pipes.
* I have blogged about Kuntar in this thread already (see comment of 12:51 AM, August 04, 2006).
* Plenty more links to follow if you read this online. The ones about Kuntar and nuclear war certainly deserve reading.
* Thank God for the "two consolations" at the end
Samir Kuntar and the Last Laugh
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
July 21, 2008
Israel has lived the past sixty years more intensively than any other country.
Its highs – the resurrection of a two-thousand year old state in 1948, history's most lopsided military victory in 1967, and the astonishing Entebbe hostage rescue in 1976 – have been triumphs of will and spirit that inspire the civilized world. Its lows have been self-imposed humiliations: unilateral retreat from Lebanon and evacuation of Joseph's Tomb, both in 2000; retreat from Gaza in 2005; defeat by Hizbullah in 2006; and the corpses-for-prisoners exchange with Hizbullah last week.
An outsider can only wonder at the contrast. How can the authors of exhilarating victories repeatedly bring such disgrace upon themselves, seemingly oblivious to the import of their actions?
One clue has to do with the dates. The highs took place during the state's first three decades, the lows occurred since 2000. Something profound has changed. The strategically brilliant but economically deficient early state has been replaced by the reverse. Yesteryear's spy masterminds, military geniuses, and political heavyweights have seemingly gone into high tech, leaving the state in the hands of corrupt, short-sighted mental midgets.
How else can one account for the cabinet meeting on June 29, when 22 out of 25 ministers voted in favor of releasing five live Arab terrorists, including Samir al-Kuntar, 45, a psychopath and the most notorious prisoner in Israel's jails, plus 200 corpses? In return, Israel got the bodies of two Israel soldiers murdered by Hizbullah. Even The Washington Post wondered at this decision.
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert endorsed the deal on the grounds that it "will bring an end to this painful episode," a reference to retrieving the bodies of war dead and appeasing the hostages' families demand for closure. In themselves, both are honorable goals, but at what price? This distortion of priorities shows how a once-formidably strategic country has degenerated into a supremely sentimental country, a rudderless polity where self-absorbed egoism trumps raison d'être. Israelis, fed up with deterrence and appeasement alike, have lost their way.
Appalling as the cabinet decision was, worse yet is that neither the Likud opposition party nor other leading public Israeli institutions responded with rage, but generally (with some notable exceptions) sat quietly aside. Their absence reflects a Tami Steinmetz Center poll showing that the Israeli population approves the swap by a nearly 2-1 ratio. In short, the problem extends far beyond the official class to implicate the population at large.
On the other side, the disgraceful celebration of baby-murderer Kuntar as a national hero in Lebanon, where the government shut down to celebrate his arrival, and by the Palestinian Authority, which called him a "heroic fighter," reveals the depths of Lebanese enmity to Israel and its immorality, disturbing to anyone concerned with the Arab soul.
The deal has many adverse consequences. It encourages Arab terrorists to seize more Israeli soldiers, then kill them. It boosts Hizbullah's stature in Lebanon and legitimates Hizbullah internationally. It emboldens Hamas and makes a deal for its Israeli hostage more problematic. Finally, while this incident appears small compared to the Iranian nuclear issue, the two are related.
International headlines along the lines of "Israel Mourns, Hezbollah Exults" confirm the widely held but erroneous Middle Eastern view of Israel as a "spider's web" that can be destroyed. The recent exchange may give the already apocalyptic Iranian leadership further reason to brandish its weapons. Worse, as Steven Plaut notes, by equating "mass murderers of Jewish children to combat soldiers," the exchange effectively justifies the "mass extermination of Jews in the name of Jewish racial inferiority."
For those concerned with the welfare and security of Israel, I propose two consolations. First, Israel remains a powerful country that can afford mistakes; one estimate even predicts it would survive an exchange of nuclear weapons with Iran, while Iran would not.
Second, the Kuntar affair could have a surprise happy ending. A senior Israeli official told David Bedein that, now out of jail, Israel's obligation to protect Kuntar is terminated; on arrival in Lebanon, he became "a target for killing. Israel will get him, and he will be killed … accounts will be settled." Another senior official added "we cannot let this man think that he can go unpunished for his murder of a 4-year-old girl."
Who will laugh last, Hizbullah or Israel?
For the record, I think Pipes' two consolations are false ones. Face facts, the Lebanon War was a counter productive failure for Israel, Hizbullah have been massively strengthened. Israel now have very little room to move against Iran (if the US sets up a diplomatic base there how keen do you think they'll be on the idea of military action?). Sorry to be gloomy but I think Pipes is indulging in dangerous wishful thinking.
Karsenty (see comment above of 11:07 PM, November 26, 2007) won his case on 21/5/08. Here are his own comments:
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French Court Vindicates Al-Dura Hoax Critic
Pajamas Media
May 21, 2008
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and here's a report on it:
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French media critic calls on Sarkozy to intervene in Al-Dura French tv case
EJPress
11 Jun 08
PARIS (EJP)---The head of a French media watchdog has called on French President Nicolas Sarkozy to help issue an apology from the state-owned TV channel France 2 “for broadcasting a staged killing of a Palestinian boy in 2000.”
A Paris appeals court on May 21 found Philippe Karsenty, director of "Media-Ratings", an online media commentary site, not guilty of slandering France 2 television when he questioned the veracity of a tv report about the killing of the 12-year-old Mohammed Al-Dura on 30 September 2000.
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...but I'm struggling to find this covered in the mainstream press, eg the BBC.
* Imagine the coverage if the Israelis had shot these 11 guys
* In fact Israelis shot their attackers and gave the victims hospital space (that's NOT the fact that makes the headlines, nor the reported fact that most Gazans want the Israelis back in charge)
* It couldn't happen to nicer people
* Personally, I blame the Jews
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Gaza Strip attack on Fatah loyalists by Hamas gunmen kills 11
The Times
August 4, 2008
About 30 Palestinians were sent back to Gaza from Israel yesterday. They had fled after an attack by hundreds of Hamas gunmen in which at least 11 died. The tensions between the two main Palestinian factions erupted into open violence as hundreds of Hamas gunmen stormed a tribal bastion loyal to the rival, Western-backed Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip.
The fighting, which left at least 11 people dead and almost 100 wounded, was the worst since Hamas took control of the overcrowded coastal territory a year ago and marked a new low in efforts to resolve the increasingly complicated conflict.
The deterioration came days after Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, who had revived peace talks with the Fatah leadership in Ramallah, was forced to resign over widening corruption allegations.
With hatred flaring between Palestinians as never before, routed Fatah loyalists fled to the nearby Israeli border to seek refuge from the Islamists. Israeli soldiers opened fire on Hamas gunmen attempting to shoot fellow Palestinians, survivors said.
Most of those escaping were members of the Fatah-affiliated Hilles clan, whose Sharjiyah neighbourhood was surrounded by as many as 800 Hamas fighters armed with machineguns and anti-tank rockets.
The Fatah fugitives were pinned down in hours of heavy fighting before fleeing a few hundred metres to the Israeli border. Many were wounded from the fighting or shot while trying to get away.
When Israeli troops eventually allowed them to cross, after pleas from the West Bank leadership, the men were strip-searched for arms before being sent to hospitals inside Israel.
The explosion in violence came as Hamas extended its crackdown on opposition groups in the Gaza Strip after a bomb attack on a café a week ago that killed four of its senior security officials and a young girl. It has rounded up hundreds of people in reprisals and accused the Hilles clan of sheltering some of those behind the bombing. In response, Fatah security forces in the West Bank arrested dozens of members of a non-violent Islamic party and enforced a new ban on public assembly.
The Ramallah leadership said that it would push for those wanted Fatah members who had fled Gaza to be relocated to the West Bank, but said that those with no fear of arrest would be returned to their homes in Gaza. Yesterday about 30 were sent back to the territory, where they were immediately detained by Hamas forces for questioning.
Shadi Hilles, a 22-year-old former member of the Fatah security forces in Gaza, said that he wanted to stay in Israel and would be arrested and beaten by Hamas if he was forced to return. “I don't know what will happen. If I go back they are sure to get me,” he told The Times, lying with a foot wound in an Israeli hospital in Ashqelon.
There were a dozen other wounded Gazans, under guard by Israeli soldiers. “They arrest you, and they draw a tree or a ladder on the cell wall and tell you to climb it. When you can't, they beat you,” he said.
Mr Hilles said that, after a year of increasingly repressive rule by Hamas, people in Gaza were sick of being cut off from the world, and of Hamas's authoritarian Islamist government. “Most Gazans hope Israel will re-invade Gaza after what they've been through,” he said. “We'd love to see the Israelis take out these people who harm their own people.”
He said that the Hilles clan had been expecting Hamas to turn its guns on them since the Islamist party forged a truce with Israel to stop firing rockets into the Jewish state. With the outside foe at bay, Hamas turned on its internal rivals. “The only reason they succeeded was because some of the neighbours allowed them to dig tunnels into our area and surprise us in our sleep,” Mr Hilles said.
Ahmed Hilles, the tribal leader and senior Fatah member, who was shot in the leg fleeing the Hamas onslaught, said from his hospital bed in Beersheva in southern Israel: “Hamas will quickly discover it committed a very big act of stupidity that will be difficult to resolve.” The deepening divide between the Palestinian factions in their separate entities has turned an already complex conflict into a Gordian knot.
Israeli media reported last week that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President in Ramallah, had threatened to dissolve his moderate Palestinian Authority if Israel released Hamas prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier captured by the Islamists two years ago on the Gaza border.
With Israel now facing months of political uncertainty in its own leadership, the rickety peace process appeared defunct yesterday. Nevertheless, Mr Abbas called on Egypt to broker talks with Hamas to discuss a solution to the clashes.
“We can't lose hope. We disagree and fight, but we have to work together to bridge the big gap created unfortunately by Hamas,” he said.
Interesting to contrast what the various parties expected from this ceasefire. Also to note that it's a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, a fact that is rarely mentioned.
Hamas declares Israel truce over
BBC News
19 December 2008
The Islamist militant group Hamas says it has ended its six-month ceasefire with Israel in the Gaza Strip. As the ceasefire expired at 0400 GMT, Hamas issued a statement blaming Israel which had not "respected" the truce. Israel's foreign ministry spokesman said the militants, who control Gaza, "had chosen violence over truth". The Egyptian-brokered deal began on 19 June but has been tested regularly by Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli operations in Gaza.
...
Our correspondent says the failure to extend the truce is hardly surprising, given the fact that the deal has largely failed to achieve what each side originally wanted from it. Israel thought that it could lead to the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, captured by militant groups over two years ago. Hamas hoped it would give it breathing space to consolidate its grip on the Gaza Strip and end the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade. The Egyptians hoped it could help to end the deepening rift between Hamas and Fatah.
However, analysts say that many Palestinians feel the fight between the two factions has become less about ideology, but more about power, control and, ultimately, revenge.
Israel's War on Hamas: A Dozen Thoughts
by Daniel Pipes
30 Dec 2008
1) Arab-Israeli warfare is not the conventional battle to control territory of old. Since 1982, the primary goal in this theater is to persuade the world of the righteousness of one's cause. (I.e., who has the more affecting casualties?)
2) Palestinians have proven themselves more competent at the p.r. battle than the Israeli government, winning public support everywhere — with the lone but decisive exceptions of Israel and the United States.
3) Secondarily, Hamas's defiance should be seen in light of Iranian ambitions to wear down the Israeli body politic.
4) Most Arab regimes so fear Tehran that they can barely bestir themselves to denounce Israel's war on Hamas, much less do anything.
5) The PLO's Mahmoud Abbas condemns Israeli actions as intensely as he roots for the Israel Defense Forces to destroy Hamas.
6) The moral opprobrium for Palestinian rockets raining down on Israeli towns falls entirely on the Palestinians and their enablers.
7) Israel has made astounding tactical mistakes, including the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, long years of passively enduring rockets, and tacit acceptance of elaborate smuggling tunnels from Egypt to Gaza.
8) The IDF has learned from tactical mistakes made in 2006.
9) Still, the Israeli war effort remains problematic. For example, an unnamed Israeli defense official was quoted saying "Hamas knows our demands, and there's no use to talking about them publicly." Since when does one signal military intentions to the enemy and hide them from one's own population?
10) The Israeli goal should be victory, not ending terrorism.
11) The Bush administration must not save Hamas.
12) Nor should the Obama administration save Hamas.
Peter Hitchens on Gaza:
"Clueless in Gaza
Since we were already arguing about the Middle East, I thought I'd devote a special section of this week's posting to the Gaza outbreak, still under way as I write. Here it is. Even though all the usual suspects, the Judophobes, the diplomats, the gullible liberals, say that what Israel is doing now in Gaza is wrong, it really is wrong.
My position, as a strong supporter of Israel in general, is that Israel's action is wrong morally and gravely mistaken politically. Attacks from the air always kill innocents. It is no good pleading that you regret such deaths, when you knew perfectly well that your actions were bound to cause them. This was equally true of our own adventures in Iraq and Serbia, and is true of American bombing in Afghanistan. Israel's moral position is seriously weakened by the deaths of these innocents, and also by the flanneling and evasion of its spokesmen over this.
And just because the usual anti-Israel voices squeak that the action is 'disproportionate' ( as squeak they will, since for them Israel can never do anything right) Israel and its uncritical defenders should not assume that the word is out of place. The rocketing of Israeli civilians by Hamas is a repellent form of terrorist murder. But the bombing of Gaza by F-16s, subjecting huge numbers of civilians to the maddening terror of aerial attack, not to mention the tragedies concealed within the phrase 'collateral damage' is what exactly? Yes, you can argue that the Hamas rockets are specifically intended to kill innocent people, as they are, whereas the F-16s are targeting Hamas militants. But, see above, even the smartest bomb cannot choose exactly who will be in range of its blast, shrapnel and heat. Those who ordered the bombing knew for certain that women and children, and other non-combatants, would die and be maimed. The difference between the two actions is nothing like as great as Israel would like to believe.
Also, what is the point of this brainless flailing? Does anyone in Jerusalem really imagine that, if a few hundred Hamas militants are killed, there will be no replacements for them? Does anyone really think that anything short of a re-occupation of parts of Gaza (at enormous human and political cost, and probably unsustainable in the long-term) will stop the rockets? My guess is that rockets will still be landing on Sderot six months from now, and that Israel's political and moral position will by then be significantly weaker than it was before it launched this unwise assault. The action is as dim and misconceived as the blundering attack on Southern Lebanon under the same leadership. Both have no clear, achievable purpose. Both are propaganda gifts to the enemies of Israel, who are immensely skilled at portraying this tiny, endangered country as a giant aggressor, and who have had endless help in doing so from the stupider parts of the Israeli establishment. Both will end by demoralising the Israeli armed forces and people.
My suspicion is that these actions are entirely driven by Israeli internal politics, by the general inadequacy of the current political leadership there, and also by an underlying despair - the kind of dismal dead end which sometimes drives otherwise intelligent people into doomed adventures. Demography, the rising power of anti-Israel Russia, the increasingly pro-Arab stance of the EU, the likelihood that the USA will once again demand that Israel takes the Neville Chamberlain route to unsustainable ' land for peace' deals, the quiet emigration of many of Israel's brightest and best, the alarming success of Iran's sponsorship of Hizbollah and Hamas ( a far more genuine threat to Israel than Iran's fumbling progress towards a nuclear weapon) must have an influence. But these facts merely explain the buffoonery of the Gaza attack. They don't excuse it."
This is a short extract, but anyone interested in his general thoughts on the future of Israel should read the full posting here
Interesting from P Hitchens as ever. The key accusation is that the Israeli action "has no clear, achievable purpose". I would say that the purpose of stopping the Hamas rockets is clear, the question is whether it is achievable, or achievable by the current tactics.
I - in agreement, I think, with PH - think the Israelis are justified in attacking Hamas positions deliberately sited in civilian areas, and I dismiss any talk of "diproportionality" merely on the silly grounds that unequal numbers are killed on each side. Yes, "those who ordered the bombing knew for certain that women and children, and other non-combatants, would die and be maimed." Blame Hamas, just as you should blame the Gestapo for the collateral damage in the raid on their Copenhagen HQ in WW2.
I agree with PH that it's unclear whether current air attacks will stop the rockets. I'd like to know what alternative strategy might do better: withdrawal from Arab areas clearly doesn't work, signing a ceasefire with an untrustworthy negotiating partner committed to your destruction is unwise, does that leave anything other than nuking Teheran or reoccupation (which will kill a lot more Palestinians along with Israeli soldiers than air strikes do)?
I don't think handing Hamas "state" status will help either. Imagine what kind of rockets they'd source then.
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PS The second half of the Hitchens article is indeed absolutely outstanding. A sample:
Let me, once more,. briefly sum up my position, refined to deal with the questions raised by contributors.
1.Israel exists. Its foundation is questionable, and may not have been wise. It has mistreated minorities before, during and after its foundation. But it is not unique in this. The same could be said of many modern nations - including the USA ( a society based upon the dispossession of the North American Indians, and upon the violent annexation of formerly Mexican territory); Australia (dispossession of the Aboriginal peoples, and in places (notably Tasmania) their extermination) ; New Zealand (dispossession of the Maori peoples) , Poland ( based on the violent mass-expulsions of ethnic Germans) Russia (ditto, not to mention its own internal persecutions of Chechens, Crimean Tatars and others) The Czech Republic (ditto), India ( based upon violent mass expulsions of Muslims ) Pakistan (based upon violent mass expulsions of Hindus and Sikhs), many Arab countries (borders drawn by the British Empire for colonial purposes, but retained for convenience, Jewish and latterly Christian populations driven out, and where not driven out, subject to second-class or third-class status). If we go back a few centuries,. there is hardly a country on the planet that cannot be found guilty of some sort of 'ethnic cleansing' or aggressive annexation. Are we all to sulk bitterly over these events forever? Or does a point come where we try to make the best of things? Which attitude is better for human civilisation? I remain interested as to why Israel alone of these nations is singled out for unremitting condemnation, and why the refugees from 1948, alone of all refugees in the world, have not been resettled by and among their brothers and sisters. And I note that these specific questions are never specifically answered by those who favour the Arab cause. What is it that they do not wish to acknowledge? I accept that in many cases it is ignorance, in some the self-righteous passion of the young and ill-educated, who just know they are right and are beyond reason, but what of those who cannot use these excuses?
2. ...
"I - in agreement, I think, with PH - think the Israelis are justified in attacking Hamas positions deliberately sited in civilian areas, and I dismiss any talk of "diproportionality"
Nope, sorry JP you are clearly in disagreement with Hitchens over this point. Hitchens doesn't agree that Israel's attack on Gaza is proportionate or justified. He also believes it will have no chance of success and is further losing Israel the long term propoganda war (the more important battle in many ways). He also argues the only possible way of Israel achieving a succesful outcome would be to reoccupy, which would be a pr disaster.
Seems PH thinks Israel is going to lose the PR war whatever it does. If that's true, they might as well do what's most militarily effective & reoccupy...
Yes, and if Israel were planning to re-occupy at least that would be a clear objective, but Hitchens isn't convinced (and neither am I) that this is what they are doing. Rather he believes they are just flailing back in a desparate pointless retailation that will change nothing except tragic result of hundreds of deaths (many innocent at least 62 of the 362 killed).
Haven't seen that stat. You mean the Israelis, bombing built-up areas from the air, manage to hit only combatants 6 times out of 7?
That's unbelievable.
Well, it did come from Melanie Phillips, so based on her record for accuracy unbelievable might be quite literally the right word!
Anyhow, my main point was that (no matter how you might want to congratulate the Israelis on the accuracy of their bombs) if Israel is just striking out with no goal or purpose any innocent death is tragically pointless.
bbc world on Gaza:
"The UN says 25% of the 402 Palestinians killed were civilians; Palestinian medical officials say more than 2,000 people have been injured."
Peter Hitchens continues his debate on Israel in the comments thread to his own blog. I must confess to admiring PH's stamina, as he doesn't seem to weary of countering the many comments attacking his position.
Here are a few more highlights from PH (by the way, Hitchens refers to a poster called "Andrew", it IS NOT me in case anyone was wondering!):
"The issue of proportion does not lie in some sort of revolting, precise congruence of deaths, but the general imbalance between the military power of Israel and that of Hamas, which is shown up by this assault in ways which do long-term propaganda harm to Israel, already the target of one of the most sophisticated lying campaigns in human history.
The real balance of forces in the region is much more to do with oil, population, territory, diplomacy and propaganda, an imbalance which puts Israel (whose conventional and nuclear weapons are increasingly irrelevant to the outcome) at a bad disadvantage.
The weapons and tactics which won conventional wars in 1967 and 1973 are useless against street protests, stone-throwing children and also against rocket attacks. That is why the Arab world has switched to such attacks, which make tiny Israel appear to be the huge, aggressive bully, and the enormous, populous and wealthy Arab and Muslim world seem to be the put-upon victim.
But as long as Israel plays the game of Hamas and of Hezbollah, and reacts exactly as it is intended to to provocations designed to bring about just such actions, then it will be portrayed as Goliath, and the Arabs as David.
Does 'Rebel Conservative' think the Hamas leadership are pleased or sorry that Israel is now bombing Gaza? I do not doubt for a moment that they are absolutely delighted, and that it is what they have been trying to achieve with all those Kassams for all those years.
If Miss Livni and Mr Barak don't know this, they are stupid. If they do know it, they are selfish and irresponsible." [...]
Posted by: Peter Hitchens | 01 January 2009 at 03:49 PM
"No action open to Israel will stop the rocket attacks (just as Ehud Olmert could not possibly have achieved the stated purpose of his Lebanon adventure, the return of a captured soldier).
The purpose of the Livni/Barak assault is to gain political and electoral prestige.
Likewise, the purpose of the Hamas rockets is to provoke Israel into this sort of dimwitted flailing, which does untold damage to Israel's image." [...]
Posted by: Peter Hitchens | 01 January 2009 at 04:35 PM
""Andrew" (1st January, 11.49 am) responds to my question about why Israeli actions are uniquely subject to criticism, when Israel's sins are far from unique by saying "Most of the countries you list committed their crimes of colonization and dispossession before the international laws and conventions of the early 20th century and, fundamentally, of the post-World War II era that outlawed these acts (e.g., the US, Australia, New Zealand). Thus pointing to them is nothing but a sleight of hand. Israel's foundation amid the ethnic cleansing of the Arabs was illegal under the present system of international law, as is its ongoing military occupation of the West Bank and its brutal and immoral colonization movement there. Britain’s colonization of Australia was done in a period when we had no such international law. That is why there is a fundamental difference between the pre-20th century instances of Western imperialism and other post-World War II crimes. "
What an odd and inaccurate set of get-outs. First, a large number of the instances I produced (check the article) are post World War Two, not least the mass expulsions of Jews by Arab states after the 1948 war, and the mutual expulsions in India and Pakistan. The mass expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe (an episode of terrible brutality) was done under the Potsdam Agreement, itself an actual part of the 'Post World War Two era" in which such things supposedly do not happen. Israel's foundation, as elswhere discussed, followed Israel's acceptance of, and the Arab rejection of, a UN Partition plan, which was the last universally recognised lawful delineation of the area. I certainly do not think that Israel's foundation can be said to have been 'illegal' as he claims.
As for the ethnic cleansing, I have asked before ( and got no answer) what Arab partisans honestly think would have happened to the Jews of Mandate Palestine if the Arabs had won in 1948. And why will none of them unequivocally condemn as the barbarity that it was, the expulsion of Jews from the Arab lands after 1948? I unequivocally condemn the many barbarities undoubtedly carried out by Zionists. What is the point of going over this again and again? It is done and over.
Both sides behaved atrociously. The point is, do you want a compromise settlement and a decent peace, or do you deny Israel's very right to exist and so implicitly give your support to a future episode of ethnic cleansing to dwarf anything else that has ever happened in this region?
"Andrew" adds: "The notion that Israel alone is singled out for "unremitting condemnation" is laughable. Indonesia has been the target of Western human rights advocates (often leftists) for years for its illegal occupation and colonization of East Timor, which finally came to an end when the US government withdrew its tacit support for the crimes. Has it escaped your notice that Communist China's treatment of Tibet is a favourite cause of leftists and Hollywood liberals? That the same can be said (to a lesser degree) of Dafur now?"
He cannot be serious. It is this claim that is laughable. As I write, demonstrators are shouting outside the Israeli embassy a few hundred yards away from me, as they have been for days. I doubt any of them knows where the Indonesian or Sudanese embassies are. Can any web expert discover for me how many UN General Assembly resolutions exist condemning Israel, and how many condemning ( say ) Indonesia, Sudan, the USSR in its invasion days, Zimbabwe, Syria for the Hama massacre, Jordan for Black September (Arabs killing or persecuting Arabs again). I think you will find that the number of condemnations of Israel is far, far greater than those directed against any other country. Again, why is this? Come on, why?"
Posted by: Peter Hitchens | 01 January 2009 at 05:41 PM
The posts can be found in the comments thread to the Gaza piece here
With the news that at least 30 people were killed and 55 injured when Israeli artillery shells landed outside a UN school in Gaza and that Israel has lost more of their soldiers' lives as a result of 'friendly fire' than by Hamas, I feel more and more convinced that this latest conflict is a disaster for Israel.
However, despite my deep misgivings and growing objections to the way Israel has proscecuted this war, despicable scum like this toad from Hamas remind you what Israel is up against:
'Fighting intensified on the northern outskirts of Gaza City yesterday as a Hamas leader warned that the Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world in revenge for Israel’s devastating assault.
“They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine,” Mahmoud Zahar said in a televised broadcast recorded at a secret location. “They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”
I wonder what those who think Israel are doing the wrong thing in Gaza (there are many, and they may well be right) think Israel should have done to stop the rocketing...?
more from Peter Hitchens on Gaza:
"A contributor presumably from the USA if spelling is a guide ("SkepticOverall", 2nd January, 12.52 pm) writes :"I believe Peter you are a great social critic. But politics are maybe not your forte. "
Well, thanks, but perhaps politics are not Mr (or Mrs) Overall's forte either. Whereas I once spent several years of my life among politicians, and like to think I have picked up a thing or two from the experience. Like so many of the auto-pilot pro-Israel contributors here, he (or she) misses the point . These attacks on Gaza will not stop the rockets falling on Israel, any more than the attack on Lebanon in 2006 rescued the two kidnapped soldiers.
I'll say it again, to emphasise the centrality of the point to the argument. These attacks on Gaza will not stop the rockets falling on Israel. Since no intelligent person can believe that the current operation will stop these attacks, then either those who have ordered the operation are stupid, or they are cynical. I tend to the latter explanation. Such cynicism generally rebounds hard on those who practise it.
Also, someone who styles himself (or herself) as a 'sceptic' should be more careful about taking anyone's ostensible motives at face value. A sceptic is worth nothing if he doesn't have doubts about his own side, as well as about his opponents.
Mr Overall continues:
"Collateral Damage is something Hamas dreams of. They will put any civilian in harm's way, so as to milk dry that collateral damage global public opinion cow."
Well, ***exactly***!. And they milk it very efficiently, don't you think? They make the rocket attacks in the hope of provoking it. So why give it to them in a parcel with ribbons, smack in the middle of the news famine after Christmas when it will effortlessly dominate the TV news for a week?
I suspect Mr Overall of getting his news from Fox, which could explain why he appears to have no idea how isolated Israel already is in Europe, thanks to its almost total incompetence in the decisive propaganda war ( exemplified by the Lebanon war and this one). Defenders of Israel on this side of the Atlantic ( such as me ) are rare and embattled.
Mr Overall then says :"Israel must take radical steps for self-preservation, and if it waits for Hussein Obama to come to power, then it can kiss its ability to take these steps, good-bye."
This is simply mistaken about the nature of the threat, and seems to be based on the idea that naked force is the decisive issue in this dispute. Israel's existence is not threatened by rocket attacks from Gaza. The most pressing threat to Israel's existence (apart from demographics) lies in its potential loss of diplomatic, military and popular consent in the USA and Europe, which will lead to Israel being dragged to a super-Madrid conference and forced to make concessions (including a 'right of return' which will destroy it as a Jewish state). I do not know whether a President Obama will be specially hostile to Israel( he cannot be much more hostile than was the 'conservative'George Bush senior and his Secretary of State James Baker). But this behaviour will certainly make it easier for any anti-Israel factions in his administration to press the case for a renewed 'peace process'in which Israel makes all the concessions. Bombing Gaza makes such a conference more likely.
And Mr/Miss/Mrs Overall's parting shot is as follows: "If you demand that Israel truly constrain its military options in the name of a zero-civilian deaths policy, you may as well plant a white-flag in Jerusalem - or maybe a green one with two sabers and the Dome of the Rock? "
This mistakes a particular objection to a foolish operation for a generalised soppy pacifism. Proper military operations, permitted under the rules of just war, will inevitably lead to civilian casualties which reasonable people will reluctantly accept. But such operations need to be measured against several important standards. The Gaza operation is ineffectual militarily, self-defeating diplomatically and hugely costly in innocent lives. It fails all those important tests.
If a white or green flag ever flies over the whole of Jerusalem( and I should point out that the Dome of the Rock, like the neighbouring Al Aqsa Mosque, is under Muslim control anyway) it will not be because of an old-fashioned military defeat.
It will be because of a propaganda defeat, because Israel's incompetence at propaganda has turned it into a pariah state whose allies one by one desert it. The Gaza operation, I repeat, assists that process.
David Corbett (2nd January, 3.00 pm) asks me to 'enlighten' him in response to his assertion that "No English speaking country not even Rhodesia, was "based on dispossessing or exterminating the original inhabitants." I clearly gave several examples of such dispossession and one (Tasmania) of extermination, though another contributor disputes this.
I have to ask Mr Corbett if he will 'enlighten' me as to what he thinks happened to the original inhabitants of North America, Australia and New Zealand when British colonists arrived. We might also discuss the Caribs, after whom the Caribbean Sea is named but who for the most part no longer live on the Caribbean islands. And I shall no doubt hear from Irish nationalists on the considerable dispossessions which they certainly suffered at 'English-speaking' hands. I was amused at the offended sensibilities of a (New Zealander?) contributor who denied any such dispossession in NZ.
New Zealand these days is a little smug about its political correctness. Well, what, in that case ,were the New Zealand land wars about, between 1845 and 1872?. It does amuse me that people who are always ready to attack Israel for such actions refuse to recognise that they, or their forebears, ever did anything similar. This is what I mean when I accuse critics of Israel of being selective and unbalanced.
Posted by: Peter Hitchens | 03 January 2009 at 11:20 AM
"Adam" (2nd January, 4.33 pm) astutely notices that I seek to avoid the term'Palestinian". I do. I think it is a loaded expression, intended to give the impression that there is such a specific nationality, and perhaps to suggest that a nation called 'Palestine' existed before the creation of Israel. It didn't.
The name is in fact a British colonial invention, itself copied from a Roman colonial invention designed to humiliate the subjugated and defeatedJews, by giving their former territory the name of their bitterest historic enemies - the Philistines. ( a bit as if , say, the Chinese conquered Britain and called the subjugated province 'Germania').
The Philistines have vanished from sight, thousands of years ago, probably carried off into slavery by the Assyrians. Roman 'Palestine' had almost nothing in common with British Mandate 'Palestine'. Before the British Mandate, the area was part of the Ottoman empire, none of whose administrative boundaries bore any relation to the borders of Mandate Palestine.
During the Mandate, the term 'Palestinian' applied equally to all inhabitants, Jewish and Arab alike. The newspaper now known as 'The Jerusalem Post' was called 'The Palestine Post'. After the collapse of the Mandate, I do not think the term was widely used again until after the defeat of the Arab armies in 1967, when the Arab world began to think of alternative ways of undermining and displacing the Jewish State. Israeli Arabs ( Arab citizens of Israel) were described as Israelis, West Bankers were of course Jordanians and Gazans were Egyptians, before 1967.
He then takes a great leap sideays and concludes :"It seems to me from reading Mr Hitchens' articles on this subject that the only solution for him would be large scale resettlement of Palestinians somewhere else in the vast Arab world he so often mentions. In another context, this would be called ethnic cleansing."
Perhaps he could elaborate as to why he thinks this. I think I may in the past have considered this idea, but that was before I had seen as much of the world as I now have. I don't think people should be forced from their homes. Of course many of the Arabs displaced by Israel did originally settle elsewhere in the Arab world, but many were then thrown out after Yasser Arafat supported Saddam Hussein's seizure of Kuwait. the Arab states have been remarkably inhospitable, especially given the strength of hospitality in their culture, except for Jordan and Lebanon.
I am scolded by "Kevin" (2nd January , 9.37 pm) who quotes me correctly as saying "No action open to Israel will stop the rocket attacks...", and then asks: "From the perspective of moral philosophy - so what? . So quite a lot, actually. If no action can stop the missile attacks, then attempts to justify violence on the grounds that it will stop the attacks will be falsehoods.
In which case, what is the purpose of bombing Gaza? If it is propaganda, it is a flop, and worse than a flop. If it is electoral, it exposes Israel's leaders to accurate and just accusations of cynicism . In any case, it is impossible to defend the innocent death caused, as the action( without a decent purpose) cannot possibly qualify as a 'Just War' under the generally accepted rules.
I then get a mouthful suggesting that, because I criticise Israel over this, I of all people must be prejudiced against Israel in some way. This, by the way, is absurd. He really must accustom himself to the idea that there can be such a thing as a candid friend.
His diatribe runs:" With reference to your post that precedes this one, did you write something like this prior to the Gaza air raids:
"Because of the violence in Sderot, I cannot reply to as many comments as I should like to do..."
My answer: No. But anyone familiar with my writing knows that I write frequently about Israel, and defend Israel frequently against attacks. In fact I am one of very few who do.
He continues" You seem to be "comfortably" resigned to endless violence against Israel."
My answer: Do I? I don't see what is "comfortable" about my " resignation". Nor is "resignation" a specially accurate description of my acceptance that something cannot be done. How does he view people who repeatedly attempt actions which are obviously impossible? I should have thought 'stupid' would be a mild epithet for them. I have seen the consequences of explosives and bullets at first hand, and loathe them with a passion. But loathing and passion without reason are no basis for action. I acknowledge the limits of military power, and the propaganda dangers of using that power in ways that lead to unjustifiable innocent deaths.
"Why are you not equally resigned to retaliatory violence?".
My answer. Assuming for the sake of argument that I am 'resigned', what difference would it make if I were or weren't? Am I supposed to regard Hamas and the State of Israel as moral equivalents? Hamas is a ruthless fanatical organisation dedicated to the destruction of the Israeli State, lawless and without concern for civilisation, or for the fate of the people under its rule, who must suffer for the ultimate cause.
Hamas is uninterested in notions of the Just War. Israel, for all its many faults, is a law-governed state of free people, sensitive to criticism and possessed of a free press and a free parliament. My words might make some impression there. Does he think Hamas gives a fig what I think or say, or what he thinks or says?
My concern is for the ultimate defeat of Hamas and other similar tendencies and movements, and for a sustainable permanent compromise between Israel and the Arab peoples. I do not think either objective can be achieved by bombing Gaza. on the contrary, Hamas is stronger now than it was before, and will be stronger yet soon, just as Hezbollah is stronger as a result of the 2006 Lebanon adventure.
He goes on :"Alternatively, why have you not written, for every day that Israel has been attacked, that this violence must stop? Surely that would have helped in some small way to counter the negative media portrayal of the subsequent military action?"
My answer: See above. Some people care about criticism. Some people don't. I'd place Hamas firmly in the second group.And that is why the *ultimate* outcome of this conflict is so important.
Posted by: Peter Hitchens | 03 January 2009 at 12:08 PM"
An interesting piece from the guys at Spiked on the war in Gaza:
"Melanie Phillips, a pro-Israel zealot, captured the end-of-days elevation of a local war into a Culture War when she wrote in response to last week’s violence in Gaza: ‘The moral dividing line in this battle is very clear. Those who stand with Israel are on the side of morality, justice, and civilisation. Those in the media and public life who denounce Israel for having the temerity to defend its people are the fellow-travellers of barbarism.’ (9) This is what the Middle East has become for lazy, confused and mission-seeking Western thinkers: a super-simplistic morality tale through which you can define your entire political outlook, personality and purpose in life. This is one reason why the reaction to Gaza has been so hysterical and shrill: a great number of people have invested their entire sense of purpose into the Middle East; they fantastically and narcissistically believe that an attack on Gaza is an attack on them (‘We’re all Palestinains now’, declared anti-Israel protesters in London yesterday), or, in the case of the pro-Israel lobby, that disrespect for Israel is disrespect for their way of life, their project, their commitment to Enlightenment values, which they imagine Israel is defending.
Of course, none of this corresponds to reality. Israel is no clearheaded defender of freedom and enlightenment but an increasingly directionless and divided state, which has abandoned its ‘Greater Israel’ plans of old in favour of bunkering down behind a wall or lashing out against its various enemies. And despite what the anti-Israel lobby claims, there is no singular ‘Palestinian people’ facing down ‘Israel’s genocide’: the Palestinian camp, too, is deeply divided and increasingly leaderless, with some reporting that Fatah in the West Bank implicitly supports the harrying of its political competitors in Hamas in Gaza. But then, this is not about reality – it is about the projection of the Western crisis of meaning on to the Middle East. The end result is further internationalisation of the conflict; further deepening of divisions between enemies that apparently represent utter opposites on the political spectrum; and further difficulty in ever reaching a compromise or settlement. So much is now cynically invested in the Middle Eastern conflict by the international community that it is hard to see how it can be settled in any kind of satisfactory way."
Full article here.
Par for the course. Lovely people, Islamists. And jews=zionists=devils anyway, as we all know.
Islamists target Alan Sugar on 'Jewish hit list'
Metro
January 7, 2009
Apprentice star Sir Alan Sugar is said to be among a list of top British Jews thought to be targeted by extremists over Israel's Gaza onslaught. According to reports, the multi-millionaire businessman was named on an Islamic website along with pop producer Mark Ronson, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Labour peer Lord Levy.
One messageboard strand on the website asks for help compiling a list of "those who support Israel", while another asks: "Have we got a list of top Jews we can target?" A link to the Power 100 list of top British Jews is also provided on the online forum Ummah.
The Ummah website has been used by extemists. Those listed should treat it very seriously, British anti-terror expert Glen Jenvey told The Sun: "The Ummah website has been used by extemists. Those listed should treat it very seriously. Expect a hate campaign, and intimidation by 20 or 30 thugs."
The Community Security Trust, which advises safety advice to the UK's Jewish community, has said it expects the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain to rise as a result of the Israeli-Gaza conflict. The organisation said: "We are advising prominent Jewish individuals to be conscious of potential threats."
While those critical of the Gaza operation ponder Israel's strategic alternatives, it is well to remember the nature of their opponents.
Children of Hamas
YouTube
(Annoying backing track, but worth 3 mins. I wonder why the snippet at 2:27 hasn't made the world's news broadcasts. Might help Israel out in the propaganda war. Of course it might not be what it purports to be - but that fact hasn't stopped anti-Zionist snippets being broadcast to great fanfare...)
-------------
Again, stuff like this might tilt the propaganda war. Anyone seen it on the BBC?
Spotted by SL, whose html bitch I now apparently am.
Report: Hamas stealing aid supplies to sell to residents
YNet News
01.06.09
Grim picture of Gazans' lives painted by reports emerging from Strip, claiming gunmen hiding in civilian homes, using residents as human shields, and hijacking trucks of humanitarian aid
A government or a gang? As the Israeli operation in Gaza wears on it appears Hamas has relinquished any visage of a socio-political party, abandoning its claim to govern the residents of Gaza in favor of engaging in open war at their expense.
A number of reports from the Strip paint a picture of very difficult humanitarian conditions, not least because of Hamas itself. The suspicion is that the group's operatives have seized control of any supplies passing through the crossings – including those sent by Israel and international organizations.
Reports say Hamas takes a cut out of all aid that arrives, including flour and medicine. Supplies intended to be distributed without gain among the population is seized by the group and sold to the residents, at a profit to the Hamas government.
One such incident was recorded Monday, when a convoy of trucks carrying supplies through the Kerem Shalom crossing was opened fire upon and seized by Hamas gunmen. Similar incidents occurred with trucks carrying fuel.
In other cases, civilians are simply used as cannon fodder or human shields. Reports out of Gaza say residents who attempted to flee their homes in the northern area of the Strip were forced to go back at gunpoint, by Hamas men.
The organization is presumably interested in increasing civilian casualties in order to give rise to international pressure against Israel. Arab media reported that in an IDF strike on a UN school 30 civilians were killed, but there is no legitimate way to prove gunmen were among those killed as Hamas tends to bury these bodies quickly, thus eliminating evidence in Israel's favor.
Other civilian complaints state that Hamas gunmen pull children along with them "by the ears" from place to place, fearing that if they don't have a child with them they will be fair game to the IDF. Others hide in civilian homes and stairwells, UNRWA ambulances, and mosques.
In other reported cases Hamas gunmen hold civilians hostage in alleyways in order to provide themselves with a living barricade to ward off IDF forces. Reports somewhat more difficult to verify say the group's men shot Fatah operatives in the feet to make sure the latter would not attempt a coup.
These reports lead to the assumption that Hamas is attempting to exacerbate the atmosphere of a humanitarian crisis in the Strip, as this may promote an international ceasefire initiative. In any case the reports clearly show that the residents of Gaza have fallen prey to Hamas as well as the IDF.
Reports of alarming shortages are also forthcoming, as residents appear to lack water, flour, electricity, and any sign of a capable government. Chaos reigns as no one appears to know when electricity will be available, how to obtain water or food, or whom to address in order to evacuate the injured.
The "emergency numbers" given to residents have ceased to function, and citizens in need of assistance have only international organizations, the Red Crescent, and the hospitals themselves to turn to.
The Hamas leaders, aside from two addresses, have not been heard from. Their speeches were broadcast a number of times, but in any case many in the Strip can no longer access televisions, radios, or internet without electricity.
Despite this, no authoritative anti-Hamas sentiments have been heard from the Gazans. However Palestinian sources claim that grievances against the group are voiced in secret. The animosity towards Israel has not disappeared, say the sources, but it is now accompanied by bitterness towards the organization many are dubbing Iranian in its extremism.
The youtube video JP posted contains some disturbing footage. I think stuff like that does help people appreciate why the Israelis are fearful and sceptical about Hamas's willingness to make peace (the music track is unbelievably ham-fisted though).
Regarding the larger questions concerning the wisdom of the Gaza attack in the first place, the real test of this conflict for Israel will be whether Hamas are a stronger or weaker force within and outside the region once this is all over. If Israel manage to destroy Hamas as a threat and no more missiles are fired from Gaza, in a lot of people's eyes that would justify Israel's case for taking the strong military option.
Melanie Phillips says it's offensive to suggest the Israeli Government's decision to launch an attack on Gaza has been motivated by electoral considerations, so she will be dismayed by this article by Christopher Hitchens in the Slate (he's the 'Leftwing' one):
"The deaths of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, and of Israelis (Muslim and Christian Arab, and Druse and Bedouin, as well as Jewish, don't forget, in Ashdod and Sderot), are hardly ennobled by the sordid realization that the timing of the carnage has been determined by three sets of electoral calculation.
The first and the most obvious is the interregnum between U.S. presidencies, in which only the faintest of squeaks will be heard from our political class as our weapons are used to establish later bridgeheads and to realign our uneasy simultaneous patronage of the Israeli and the Egyptian and the Palestinian establishments. Benny Morris, one of the most tough-minded Israeli intellectual commentators, used to speculate that Israel would employ the Bush-Obama transition to strike at Iranian nuclear sites. He may have been wrong in the short term, but, in fact, the current attack on Gaza and Hamas is the same war in a micro or proxy form.
Second comes the impending February election in Israel. Until last week, Benjamin Netanyahu was strongly favored to come back as the man whose hard line against territorial concessions had been vindicated by the use of long-evacuated Gaza as a launching pad for random missile attacks. It now seems unlikely that he can easily outbid the current ruling coalition, at least from the hawkish right. (Remember that all the nonsense of the so-called "Al-Aqsa intifada," which wasted so much time and life in the last decades, was first instigated by an electoral rivalry between Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon, in which the latter showed himself more hard-line than the former by waddling militantly across the Temple Mount in the company of an armed band. For such vanities do children end up screaming in the streets over the mangled bodies of their parents—and vice, if I may so phrase it, versa.)
Hillel Halkin and Tom Segev discussed Benny Morris' book Righteous Victims in a 2000 "Book Club." Rebecca Sinderbrand spent time with some of the Christian evangelicals in Israel.
The third consideration, and the least noticed, is the fact that this month is the one where new elections for the Palestinian Authority have to be called by President Mahmoud Abbas, if not actually held. Before the new year, I talked to one or two knowledgeable Palestinians who argued that, under then-present conditions, Hamas had to hope that such elections would not soon take place. Life in Islamic Gaza was not such as to induce ecstatic happiness and prosperity among the populace: In common with many fundamentalist movements, the Muslim Brotherhood in its local Palestinian incarnation had badly overplayed its hand. It seems improbable that we'll ever know what would have happened in a free vote, but I think it's safe to say that recent events have further postponed the emergence of a democratic and secular alternative among the Palestinians. I even think it's possible that some people in Israel and some other people in Gaza do not want to see the emergence of such a force, but let me not be cynical.
.
So, that is why this nasty confrontation is taking place this time instead of at another time. But each miniature of the picture also implies its own enlargement, which in turn suggests that if the latest Gaza war hadn't come at this time, it would certainly have come at another. Again and as usual, Morris' work is instructive. As one of the most stern of the "revisionist" historians of Israel's founding who went deep into his own country's archives to show that Palestinians had been the victims of a deliberate ethnic cleansing in 1947-48, Morris is accustomed to looking disagreeable facts in the face. I strongly recommend a reading of his Dec. 29 op-ed in the New York Times. In it, he described not so much what he saw when he himself looked facts in the face as what Israelis see when they look outward and inward. To the north, Hezbollah local missiles backed by Syria and Iran, two dictatorships, one of which may soon possess nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. To the south and west, Hamas in Gaza. In the occupied territories of the West Bank, the same old colonial rule over the unwilling and the same mad confrontation with the Messianic Jewish settlers. Within Israel itself, an increasing tendency for Israeli Arabs to identify as Arabs or Palestinians rather than Israelis. Overarching everything, the sheer demographic fact that Israeli law, and Israeli power, governs or dominates more and more non-Jews, fewer and fewer of whom are interested in compromise. (It was this demographic imperative, if you remember, that made even Sharon give up the idea of "greater Israel," a scheme for which many state-subsidized Israeli settlers are still very much willing to die—and to kill.)
Compared with the threat to its very existence that had been posed in 1967, wrote Morris, the only changes that now favored Israel were the arrival of another 2 million or 3 million Israelis and the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. But how reassuring, really, are those developments? Where are the new immigrants to go, unless onto disputed land? And on whom can the nukes be employed? On Gaza? In Hebron? These places would still be there, right next to the Jewish community, even if Damascus and Tehran were ashes. Only the messianic could even contemplate such an outcome. (What a pity there are so many of them locally.)
Confronted with this amazing concatenation of circumstances, and with some of the frightening blunders—such as the last invasion of Lebanon—that have resulted from it, some Israeli politicians appear to think that taking a tough line in Gaza might at least be good for short-term morale. This was the clear implication of the usually admirable Ethan Bronner's New York Times front-page reports on Dec. 28, 2008, and Jan. 4, 2009. So why not just come right out with it and say that one is bombing for votes?
It is only when one begins to grasp all the foregoing that one understands exactly how disgusting and squalid is the behavior of the Hamas gang. It knows very well that sanctions are injuring every Palestinian citizen, but—just like Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq—it declines to cease the indiscriminate violence and the racist and religious demagogy that led to the sanctions in the first place. Palestine is a common home for several religious and national groups, but Hamas dogmatically insists that the whole territory is instead an exclusively Muslim part of a future Islamic empire. At a time when democratic and reformist trends are observable in the region, from Lebanon to the Gulf, Hamas' leadership is physically and economically a part of the clientele of two of the area's worst dictatorships. (Should you ever be in need of a free laugh, look up those Western "intellectuals" who believe that a vote for an Islamist party and an Islamic state is a way to vote against corruption! They have not lately studied Iran and Saudi Arabia.) Gaza could have been a prefiguration of a future self-determined Palestinian state. Instead, it has been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and made into a place of repression for its inhabitants and aggression for its neighbors. Once again, the Party of God has the whip hand. To read Benny Morris is to be quite able—and quite free—to doubt that there should ever have been an Israeli state to begin with. But to see Hamas at work is to resolve that whatever replaces or follows Zionism, it must not be the wasteland of Islamic theocracy."
What a mo-fo. Someone tell me how Israel could possibly win a propaganda war, whatever it does.
Israel slams cardinal's 'concentration camp' jibe
Ynet News
01.07.09
Israel on Wednesday slammed a senior Vatican official for comparing the Gaza Strip to a "concentration camp," saying the comments were "based on Hamas propaganda." ... Cardinal Renato Martino, the Vatican's justice and peace minister, was quoted by the online Italian daily Il Sussidiario as saying the conditions in Gaza "increasingly resemble a big concentration camp."
"Someone tell me how Israel could possibly win a propaganda war, whatever it does."
By not throwing your hands up in defeat; if you give in to despair and take a everybody hates us anyway attitude you'll definitely lose the 'propoganda war'. How do you think the Israeli army would fare if before every battle they said 'how can we possibly win. It's not fair!"
Two thoughts, as starters, on fighting the propaganda war:
1. No double standards - Call out Melanie Phillips, Daniel Pipes et al, when they are talking about Arabs and Muslims in ways that are lazy and offensive. Be clear-sighted about Israel's flaws and mistakes, as well as their strengths and successes.
2. Don't blame everything on anti-semitism. Of course that may be a factor, but if used indiscrimitarily it will only win more enemies, when we need allies. If you cry wolf on anti-Semitism it desensitises people to genuine disturbing examples of anti-semitism, so be discriminate. (e.g, I think accusations of Ken Livingstone being an anti-semite where over-played and I don't think the investigation into Lord Levy was a anti-Semitic conspiracy).
I was uneasy about the last sentence in Christopher Hitchens' piece on Gaza. It suggested to me that he is anticipating the demise of the Israeli state, or am I misreading him?
"To read Benny Morris is to be quite able—and quite free—to doubt that there should ever have been an Israeli state to begin with. But to see Hamas at work is to resolve that whatever replaces or follows Zionism, it must not be the wasteland of Islamic theocracy."
A brilliant article on Gaza from Spiked magazine:
Gaza is not Warsaw
Denouncing Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories as brutal ‘Zio-Nazism’, as a genocidal project and a process of inhumane ghettoisation akin to the experience of the Jews in 1940s Europe, is not new. But over the past week, such shrill and inaccurate historical equating has sunk to a newly degenerate level.
From the London protesters who called for an end to ‘the final solution’ in Palestine, to the former London mayor Ken Livingstone who said that the Israelis ‘will continue to create a Warsaw Ghetto in the Middle East’, anti-Israel campaigners are lazily using images of Nazi atrocities as readymade symbols of human oppression. They are doing it in order to denounce the violence in Gaza, which, however desperate, bears no resemblance in either form or scale to the Holocaust, the greatest crime of the twentieth century. As David Aaronovitch argued in The Times (London), the comparisons with the Warsaw Ghetto are ‘philistine’ (1).
Looking at the Middle East conflict from the outside, it might be tempting to fall back on shoving Jews, Nazis, Israelis and Palestinians into one simple narrative instead of going through the trouble of understanding what went on back then or what is going on right now. Some anti-Israel campaigners also find a perverse satisfaction in throwing the Jews’ recent tragic history back in their faces, with slogans like ‘Zionism = Nazism’, ‘Israel: The Fourth Reich’, and ‘from oppressed to oppressors’. These, by now tired, clichés can easily fit on to placards and plant a powerfully simplistic image in people’s minds of Jews ‘doing onto others what was done to them’.
As Aaronovitch rightly says: ‘This ahistorical hyperbole is… the product of a kind of binary thinking, the belief that there can only be two kinds of anything, and two possible responses: there’s the good and the bad; there’s the victim and the murderer.’ (2)
However, it is not only the conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians that is understood through ‘binary thinking’ these days, and reduced to ‘good and bad, victim and murderer’. Disparate contemporary conflicts, each with complex roots and circumstances, are routinely transformed into black-and-white morality tales and likened to the Holocaust – think Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur. And anyone who questions this representation, and argues that however awful these conflicts are they cannot be compared with the Holocaust, will likely be labelled a ‘denier’. That accusation also comes straight out of debates around Nazi crimes, evoking the phrase ‘Holocaust denier’. The reduction of Israel/Palestine to a simple, binary morality tale looks like the logical conclusion to the recent moralisation of international affairs.
Undoubtedly, Gazans are suffering terribly. Civilians are being maimed and killed, property is being destroyed, and any hopes of leading a normal life in Gaza have been crushed for the foreseeable future. Yet even a brief examination of what went on in the Warsaw Ghetto shows just how ignorant and opportunistic the Holocaust comparisons are.
Between 1941 and 1943 the population of the Warsaw Ghetto dropped from an estimated 380,000 to 70,000 as a result of starvation, disease and deportations to concentration and extermination camps (3). The rate of starvation in the ghetto was over 4,000 a month. In 1942, mass expulsion of the ghetto inhabitants began at a rate of over 5,000 Jews a day. Only some 55,000 remained in the ghetto. Some decided to resist, but the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was crushed after four weeks. According to German figures – which may have understated the resistance fighters’ resources yet still revealed their poor odds of winning any victory – the Nazis captured nine rifles, 59 pistols, and several hundred grenades, explosives and mines. Seven thousand of the captured Jews were shot, 22,000 were transported to death camps (4).
[support spiked]
Israel is not dotted with labour camps and gas chambers, there is no plan to exterminate the Palestinians. Israel’s leadership has repeatedly said that their enemy is Hamas, not the Palestinian people, who are given advance warning of bombings through leaflets and mobile phone messages. It has been reported that Israel is offering some injured Gazans hospital treatment, which is certainly not something the Nazis ever did for Jews. None of that remotely justifies Israel’s bombing campaign, but it shows clearly that the Israelis cannot be compared to the Nazis who ghettoised Jews in Warsaw.
Some Jews, too, have compared Israelis with Nazis, and the Israel Defense Forces with the SS. The right-wing Jewish settlers who were deported from Gaza under then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s ‘disengagement plan’ wore orange Star of David patches similar to the yellow ones that the Nazis forced Jews to wear. They accused the IDF soldiers overseeing the evacuation of acting like Nazis.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Tony Greenstein, who describes himself as ‘socialist, anti-Zionist, anti-racist’, said to anti-Israel demonstrators in Brighton, England, last weekend: ‘The Gazan Palestinians are no different in kind from the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto and it is no surprise that the Zionists, who collaborated with the Nazis during the war, should now seek to ape the persecutors of the Jews.’ (5)
Greenstein spoke ‘as a Jewish opponent of Zionism and their terror bombing of Gaza’ (6). The irony is that he has no qualms about rehashing a worn-out conspiracy theory, while defiling the memory of the Jews who suffered at the hands of the Nazis and denigrating Palestinians by turning them into objects of a vicarious Western pity.
The Holocaust has become cheap currency in contemporary debates about international affairs. Even some of the commentators who now denounce any comparison between the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Holocaust have not hesitated to apply the analogy in other ways. David Aaronovitch and many others applied ‘binary thinking’ to Bosnia, arguing: ‘In front of our eyes, just about, with our full knowledge, thousands were taken to European fields — just as they had been 50 years earlier — and murdered en masse. It was the most shaming moment of my life. We had let it happen again.’ (7)
Meanwhile, the pro-Israel columnist Melanie Philips, while criticising the idea that Palestinians are being subjected to a planned extermination, has no qualms about calling Hamas’ rocket-firing a ‘truly genocidal assault upon [Israel’s] citizens’ (8).
Jewish organisations have also interpreted the term ‘genocide’ generously, often insisting that they have a special responsibility to ensure the Holocaust ‘never happens again’. The British Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, for instance, ‘commemorates the tragic loss of life in the genocides of World War II, in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur’ (9).
We should resist the urge to indulge in ‘binary thinking’ – in relation to Israel and Palestine and all other contemporary conflicts. Those affected by them deserve not to be reduced to black-and-white pawns in Western campaigners’ sloganeering. Anyone who wants to uphold the memory of the Holocaust and understand today’s conflicts in their specifics – all the better to try to come up with some possible solutions – should stay well clear of the cynical use and abuse of Nazi atrocities.
Nathalie Rothschild is commissioning editor of spiked."
Since we were discussing the propaganda war...
There is no such thing as a 'good lie'
"The claim of Israeli Army spokeswoman Avital Leibovitch that the blogosphere is ‘a whole new battlefield’ gained troubling credence this week, with the release and circulation of a video clip showing the horrific aftermath of an Israeli air attack on a Gazan market.
It makes for truly shocking viewing. As the smoke clears, the mangled, dismembered bodies of Palestinians come into view. The accompanying din of confusion and distress is almost unbearable. For many anti-war campaigners, if anti-Israeli sentiment was virulent before seeing the footage, it was a foaming wash of hatred afterwards. ‘The carnage is raw’, wrote one blogger, ‘it enrages me. I wish for Israel nothing but destruction.’ (1) Another blogger was near speechless: ‘There are no words to describe the terror of the Jewish state of Israhell.’ (2) Such was the stir created by the bloody footage that the French national broadcaster, France 2, decided to broadcast it.
And well they might. For here was a video clip which showed the barbarity of Israel at first hand, a piece of footage that said more about the one-sided nature of the war in Gaza than a thousand news reporters’ words ever could. But there was one problem with it: the clip was not what it puported to be. Yes, those really are Palestinians lying dead or maimed on the floor, but the footage is not from the current war in Gaza; it is from September 2005. And it does not show the aftermath of an Israeli air attack - it is the gruesome epilogue to the accidental explosion of a truck loaded with rockets at a Hamas rally...."
Of course nobody should have double standards, and it's true that not every crit of Israel has an anti-semitic component (though a helluva lot does, unless you have some other explanation for eg the UN bias against that country (the General Assembly passes about 19 resolutions a year against Israel).
But are you honestly saying that it's because of people like Pipes* that Israel does not get a fair hearing in the world's press? Or that such coverage is a reaction against unfair accusations of anti-semitism? To ask the question is to know the answer.
And yes, you're right about the end of the C. Hitchens piece. I have a lot of time for the man, but in my (limited) knowledge of his opinions, his attitudes to Israel are the ones that strike me as being most left-mainstream, whereas I understand he has changed his mind from that starting point on a whole lot of other stuff.
* examples of Pipes' double standards?
Solving the "Palestinian Problem
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
January 7, 2009
Israel's war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza.
Let's first review what we know does not and cannot work:
* Israeli control. Neither side wishes to continue the situation that began in 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces took control of a population that is religiously, culturally, economically, and politically different and hostile.
* A Palestinian state. The 1993 Oslo Accords began this process but a toxic brew of anarchy, ideological extremism, antisemitism, jihadism, and warlordism led to complete Palestinian failure.
* A binational state: Given the two populations' mutual antipathy, the prospect of a combined Israel-Palestine (what Muammar al-Qaddafi calls "Israstine") is as absurd as it seems.
Excluding these three prospects leaves only one practical approach, that which worked tolerably well in the period 1948-67:
* Shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule: Amman rules the West Bank and Cairo runs Gaza.
read on...
"But are you honestly saying that it's because of people like Pipes* that Israel does not get a fair hearing in the world's press? Or that such coverage is a reaction against unfair accusations of anti-semitism?"
No, you're missing my point. What I'm saying is that if I was asked to name a vocal defender of Israel within the UK, Melanie Phillips would be the first person that sprang to mind (she's often on Question Time, BBC Radio and features prominently and regularly in influential publications like the Daily Mail and The Spectator). I think the problem is that she sometimes appears unreasonable and hysterical, which helps foster the impression amongst the wider public that Israel is also unreasonable and prone to over-reaction, and sometimes leads to Israel's legitimate fears and concerns being dismissed as paraniona. To correct that impression it's important for defenders of Israel to call Phillips out on her double standards when they appear. I'll give you two examples of her over-heated and counter-productive rhetoric 1. libelling the BBC as 'The Hamas Broadcasting Corporation' 2. accusing the Conservative party of being in alliance with radical extremism. Now this kind of stuff just alienates those institutions, it certainly doesn't help get a fair hearing. I'm not saying it's the main reason, I'm just saying if you want to address the bad image Israel has currently got (worth remembering that Israel's image used to be a lot more positive internationally), you'll have to do it brick by brick and a good (small) start would be to challenge other high profile defenders of Israel when they are being hysterical or unreasonable.
A satire on two years ago, equally valid now.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Was Overreaction
The People's Cube
8/7/06
Regarding the coverage of Gaza, a recurring theme is the BBC's bias against Israel, in this a recorded debate for the Guardian Stephen Pollard accuses the BBC of bais against Israel, while Jonathan Freedland defends them. I thought Oliver Kamm's comment on perceived BBC bias was worth noting:
"I have my criticisms of the BBC's coverage of foreign affairs generally, including the Israel-Palestine conflict, but I do not believe that the problem lies in a supposed anti-Israel bias on the BBC's part. If anything, the BBC has the opposite problem of being so wary of making value judgements that it fails to say very much. But for all that, I think Jeremy Bowen's reports on the violence in Gaza have been scrupulous and informative."
I've noticed that opponents of Israel's latest actions in Gaza are told that the alternative option of tolerating the rockets is unthinkable. Now I sympathise with this argument, so I was surprised to read in the NYT that for the Defense Minister Ehud Barak toleration was definitely an option and that he was opposed to the War and has been pushing for a cease-fire since it began: "he never took Hamas as seriously as many others, considering it a relatively small strategic challenge whose rockets and arms buildup could be tolerated for a while to allow bigger problems to be handled."
The NYT also write (the mere suggestion of which offends Melanie Phillips) that "the truth is that the public wanted this war more than Mr. Barak did."
Compulsory reading.
On Proportionality
by Michael Walzer
The New Republic
How much is too much in war?
January 08, 2009
Let's talk about proportionality--or, more important, about its negative form. "Disproportionate" is the favorite critical term in current discussions of the morality of war. But most of the people who use it don't know what it means in international law or in just war theory. Curiously, they don't realize that it has been used far more often to justify than to criticize what we might think of as excessive violence. It is a dangerous idea.
Proportionality doesn't mean "tit for tat," as in the family feud. The Hatfields kill three McCoys, so the McCoys must kill three Hatfields. More than three, and they are breaking the rules of the feud, where proportionality means symmetry. The use of the term is different with regard to war, because war isn't an act of retribution; it isn't a backward-looking activity, and the law of even-Steven doesn't apply.
Like it or not, war is always purposive in character; it has a goal, an end-in-view. The end is often misconceived, but not always: to defeat the Nazis, to stop the dominos from falling, to rescue Kuwait, to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Proportionality implies a measure, and the measure here is the value of the end-in-view. How many civilian deaths are "not disproportionate to" the value of defeating the Nazis? Answer that question, put that way, and you are likely to justify too much--and that is the way proportionality arguments have worked over most of their history.
The case is the same with arguments focused on particular acts of war. Consider the example of an American air raid on a German tank factory in World War Two that kills a number of civilians living nearby. The justification goes like this: The number of civilians killed is "not disproportionate to" the damage those tanks would do in days and months to come if they continued to roll off the assembly line. That is a good argument, and it does indeed justify some number of the unintended civilian deaths. But what number? How do you set an upper limit, given that there could be many tanks and much damage?
Because proportionality arguments are forward-looking, and because we don't have positive, but only speculative, knowledge about the future, we need to be very cautious in using this justification. The commentators and critics using it today, however, are not being cautious at all; they are not making any kind of measured judgment, not even a speculative kind. "Disproportionate" violence for them is simply violence they don't like, or it is violence committed by people they don't like.
So Israel's Gaza war was called "disproportionate" on day one, before anyone knew very much about how many people had been killed or who they were. The standard proportionality argument, looking ahead as these arguments rightly do, would come from the other side. Before the six months of cease-fire (when the fire never ceased), Hamas had only primitive and home-made rockets that could hit nearby small towns in Israel. By the end of the six months, they had far more advanced rockets, no longer home-made, that can hit cities 30 or 40 kilometers away. Another six months of the same kind of cease-fire, which is what many nations at the UN demanded, and Hamas would have rockets capable of hitting Tel Aviv. And this is an organization explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel. How many civilian casualties are "not disproportionate to" the value of avoiding the rocketing of Tel Aviv? How many civilian casualties would America's leaders think were "not disproportionate to" the value of avoiding the rocketing of New York?
The answer, again, is too many. We have to make proportionality calculations, but those calculations won't provide the most important moral limits on warfare.
These are the questions that point us toward the important limits. First, before the war begins: Are there other ways of achieving the end-in-view? In the Israeli case, this question has shaped the intense political arguments that have been going on since the withdrawal from Gaza: What is the right way to stop the rocket attacks? How do you guarantee that Hamas won't acquire more and more advanced rocketry? Many policies have been advocated, and many have been tried.
Second, once the fighting begins, who is responsible for putting civilians in the line of fire? It is worth recalling that in the Lebanon war of 2006, Kofi Annan, then the Secretary-General of the UN, though he criticized Israel for a "disproportionate" response to Hezbollah's raid, also criticized Hezbollah--not just for firing rockets at civilians, but also for firing them from heavily populated civilian areas, so that any response would inevitably kill or injure civilians. I don't think that the new Secretary General has made the same criticism of Hamas, but Hamas clearly has a similar policy.
The third question: Is the attacking army acting in concrete ways to minimize the risks they impose on civilians? Are they taking risks themselves for that purpose? Armies choose tactics that are more or less protective of the civilian population, and we judge them by their choices. I haven't heard this question asked about the Gaza war by commentators and critics in the Western media; it is a hard question, since any answer would have to take into account the tactical choices of Hamas.
In fact, all three are hard questions, but they are the ones that have to be asked and answered if we are to make serious moral judgments about Gaza--or any other war. The question "Is it disproportionate?" isn't hard at all for people eager to say yes, but asked honestly, the answer will often be no, and that answer may justify more than we ought to justify. Asking the hard questions and worrying about the right answers--these are the moral obligations of commentators and critics, who are supposed to enlighten us about the moral obligations of soldiers. There hasn't been much enlightenment these last days.
I love Dershowitz, and want to have his children.
The criminal cynicism of Hamas
Alan Dershowitz
guardian.co.uk
8 January 2009
Those who protest civilian deaths apply a double standard that blames only Israel when the true responsibility lies with Hamas
As Israel persists in its military efforts – by ground, air and sea – to protect its citizens from deadly Hamas rockets, and as protests against Israel increase around the world, the success of the abominable Hamas double war crime strategy becomes evident. The strategy is as simple as it is cynical: provoke Israel by playing Russian roulette with its children, firing rockets at kindergartens, playgrounds and hospitals; hide behind its own civilians when firing at Israeli civilians; refuse to build bunkers for its own civilians; have the TV cameras ready to transmit every image of dead Palestinians, especially children; exaggerate the number of civilians killed by including as "children" Hamas fighters who are under 18, and as "women", female terrorists.
Hamas itself has a name for this. They call it "the CNN strategy" (this is not to criticize CNN or any other objective news source for doing its job; it is to criticise Hamas for exploiting the freedom of press, which it forbids in Gaza). The CNN strategy is working because decent people all over the world are naturally sickened by images of dead and injured children. When they see such images repeatedly flashed across TV screens, they tend to react emotionally.
Rather than asking why these children are dying and who is to blame for putting them in harm's way, the average viewer, regardless of their political or ideological perspective, wants to see the killing stopped. They blame those whose weapons directly caused the deaths, rather than those who provoked the violence by deliberately targeting civilians. They forget the usual rules of morality and law. For example, when a murderer takes a hostage and fires from behind his human shield, and a policeman, in an effort to stop the shooting accidentally kills the hostage, the law of every country holds the hostage taker guilty of murder – even though the policeman fired the fatal shot. The same is true of the law of war. The use of human shields, in the way Hamas uses the civilian population of Gaza, is a war crime, as is its firing of rockets at Israeli civilians. Every human shield that is killed by Israeli self-defence measures is the responsibility of Hamas, but you wouldn't know that from watching the media coverage.
The CNN strategy seems to work better, at least in some parts of the world, against Israel that it would against other nations. There are many more protests – and fury – directed against Israel when it inadvertently kills fewer than 100 civilians in a just war of self-defence, than against Arab and Muslim nations and groups that deliberately kill far more civilians for no legitimate reason. It isn't the nature of the victims, since more Arabs and Muslim civilians are killed every day in Africa and the Middle East by Arab and Muslim governments and groups – with little or no protest. (For example, on the first day of Israel's ground attack, approximately 30 Palestinians, almost all Hamas combatants, were killed. On the same day, an Islamic suicide bomber blew herself up in a mosque in Iraq, killing 40 innocent Muslims. No protests. Little media coverage.)
It isn't the nature of the killings, since Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid killing civilians – if for no other reason than that it hurts their cause – while Hamas does everything in its power to force Israel to kill Palestinian civilians by firing its missiles from densely-populated civilian areas and refusing to build shelters for its civilians. It isn't the nature of the conflict, because Israel is fighting a limited war of self-defence designed to protect its own civilians from rocket attacks, while most of those killed by Arabs and Muslims are killed in genocidal and tribal warfare with no legitimate aim. The world simply doesn't seem to care when Arabs and Muslims kill large numbers of other Arabs and Muslims, but a qualitatively different standard seems to apply when the Jewish state kills even a relatively small number of Muslims and Arabs in a war of self-defence.
The international community doesn't even seem to care when Palestinian children are killed by rocket fire – unless it is from Israeli rockets. The day before the recent outbreak of hostilities, Hamas fired an anti-personnel rocket at Israeli civilians, but the rocket fell short of its target and killed two Palestinian girls. Yet there was virtually no coverage and absolutely no protests against these "collateral" civilian deaths. Hamas refused to allow TV cameras to show these dead Palestinian children, who were killed by their own rockets.
Nor have there been protests against the cold-blooded murders by Hamas and its supporters of dozens of Palestinian civilians who allegedly "collaborated" with Israel. Indeed, Hamas and Fatah have killed far more Palestinian civilians over the past several years than have the Israeli Defence Force, but you wouldn't know that from the media, the United Nations or protesters, who focus selectively on only those deaths caused by Israeli military actions.
The protestors who have filled the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco and elsewhere in recent days were nowhere to be seen when hundreds of Jewish children were murdered by Palestinian terrorists over the years.
Moreover, the number of civilians killed by Israel is almost always exaggerated. First, it widely assumed that if a victim is a "child" or a "woman", he or she is necessarily a civilian. Consider the following report in New York Times last week: "Hospital officials in Gaza said that of the more than 390 people killed by Israeli fighter planes since Saturday, 38 were children and 25 women." Some of these children and women were certainly civilians, but others were equally certainly combatants: Hamas often uses Palestinian youths, as well as women, as terrorists. Israel is entitled, under international law, to treat these children and women as the combatants they have become. Hamas cannot, out of one side of its mouth, boast that it recruits young people and women to become terrorists, and then, out of the other side of its mouth, complain when Israel takes them at their word. The media should look closely and critically at the number of claimed civilian victims before accepting self-serving and self-contradictory exaggerations.
By any objective count, the number of genuinely innocent civilians killed by the Israeli air force in Gaza is lower than the collateral deaths caused by any nation in a comparable situation. Hamas does everything in its power to provoke Israel into killing as many Palestinian civilians as possible, in order to generate condemnation against the Jewish state. They have gone so far as firing rockets from Palestinian schoolyards and hiding their terrorists in Palestinian maternity wards. Lest there be any doubt about the willingness of Hamas to expose their families to martyrdom, remember that the Hamas terrorist leader recently killed in an Israeli air attack sent his own son to be a suicide bomber, and then refused to allow his family to leave their house even after learning that he and his house has been placed on the list of military targets.
Nor is this double standard applied to Israel on the one hand, and Arab and Muslim nations and groups on the other hand, limited to the current situation in Gaza. It has provided an excuse for the international community to remain silent in the face of massive human rights violations including genocides perpetrated by Arabs and Muslims around the world for years. Many of those who protest Israeli self-defence actions remain silent in the face of real genocides – such as that in Darfur.
The reality is that the elected and de facto government of Gaza has declared war against Israel. Under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, they have committed an "armed attack" against the Jewish state. The Hamas charter calls for Israel's total destruction. Under international law, Israel is entitled to take whatever military action is necessary to repel that attack and stop the rockets. It must seek to minimise civilian deaths in a manner consistent with the legitimate military goal, and it is doing precisely that, despite Hamas efforts to maximise civilian deaths on both sides.
The best outcome for the purpose of producing peace would be the destruction or substantial weakening of Hamas, which rejects the two-state solution. Israel and the Palestinian Authority could then agree on a peace that would end both the Israeli occupation and the rocketing of Israeli civilians.
JP asks for examples of Pipes double standards, I don't have any specifics, but would ask him to imagine what Pipes would make of an Islamic Professor who dedicated himself to finding evidence of Jewish conspiracy in even the most contentious, seemingly unconnected episodes, in the same way that Pipes sees a pattern/conspiracy in seemingly unconnected events involving Muslims or/and Arabs.
The Guardian reports that the Obama camp are 'prepared to talk to Hamas'.
"The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.
The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency's ostracising of the group."
Now the question remains have Israel boosted Hamas's negotiating power with this war or not? I know what I think.
Jonathan Freedland was prompted by the news to write that "Talking to Hamas is a step toward peace":
"those of us who have long believed that peace depends on engaging with all parties to a conflict – and that peace is made with your enemies rather than with your friends – have reason to be cheered by this news, tentative as it is."
[...]
"If the latest signals are to be believed, Obama is now ready to soften the edges of those conditions. For those who believe that, whether we like it or not, Hamas is now part of the Palestinian reality and that no peace can ever come unless all the major players on both sides – Israeli and Palestinian – are included, this is a small, unofficial, unconfirmed but welcome move in the right direction."
From Comment is Free America:
Israel's free ride ends
As Israel pulverises Gaza, questions and doubts about Israeli policy are becoming more prominent in the American media.
Michelle Goldberg
Guardian
Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian:
Amid the horror and doom of Gaza, the IRA precedent offers hope
The Northern Ireland example is instructive. Through dialogue even the most implacable of enemies can make peace
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart on the war in Gaza
Amaterishly done, but very powerful nonetheless. The Taliban would be proud of what Hamas do to that wedding (about minute 2).
Hamas terrorists kill innocent Palestinians in Gaza
YouTube
Brief comment on Freedland: I think he dismisses the contrast between Hamas' aims and those of the IRA too easily. They're both bad, but that doesn't mean they're equally bad - after all, the Krays were nasty buggers, but they were orders of magnitude down the psycho scale compared to say Stalin. The IRA no doubt had its complement of psychos, but it was entirely possible for a reasonable person to sign up to their political goal (if not methods). I don't think they were religious fanatic totalitarian nihilists like Islamists are.
Goldberg (bloody Jews, they get everywhere) makes some interesting points, and (if true) I applaud this guy Sanchez she mentions. Yes, it *is* all about what really happened. Goldberg commits the usual unthinking "disproportionate" nonsense that I've blogged on elsewhere.
Regarding the IRA's goals, I thought they were originally committed to establishing a united communist/Marxist Ireland, but then their aims became more realistic (might have the Marxist united Ireland bit wrong - fact check anyone).
It's a good question that deserves research. I can anecdotally report what a politics prof once told me, that the IRA's political philosophy was a hopeless and ludicrous half-baked mix of semi-understood pseudo-Marxist claptrap until Adams sorted it out. But I was told that a long time ago and my brain has since become mush ;-)
A powerful piece attacking the war in Gaza written from an Israeli's perspective (good paper Haaretz):
"The IDF has no mercy for the children in Gaza nursery schools
By Gideon Levy Haaretz Correspondent
The fighting in Gaza is "war deluxe." Compared with previous wars, it is child's play - pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight. All this must be said openly, before we begin exulting in our heroism and victory.
This war is also child's play because of its victims. About a third of those killed in Gaza have been children - 311, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 270 according to the B'Tselem human rights group - out of the 1,000 total killed as of Wednesday. Around 1,550 of the 4,500 wounded have also been children according to figures from the UN, which says the number of children killed has tripled since the ground operation began."
[...]
"History has seen innumerable brutal wars take countless lives.
But the horrifying proportion of this war, a third of the dead being children, has not been seen in recent memory.
God does not show mercy on the children at Gaza's nursery schools, and neither does the Israel Defense Forces. That's how it goes when war is waged in such a densely populated area with a population so blessed with children. About half of Gaza's residents are under 15.
No pilot or soldier went to war to kill children. Not one among them intended to kill children, but it also seems neither did they intend not to kill them. They went to war after the IDF had already killed 952 Palestinian children and adolescents since May 2000.
The public's shocking indifference to these figures is incomprehensible. A thousand propagandists and apologists cannot excuse this criminal killing. One can blame Hamas for the death of children, but no reasonable person in the world will buy these ludicrous, flawed propagandistic goods in light of the pictures and statistics coming from Gaza.
One can say Hamas hides among the civilian population, as if the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv is not located in the heart of a civilian population, as if there are places in Gaza that are not in the heart of a civilian population. One can also claim that Hamas uses children as human shields, as if in the past our own organizations fighting to establish a country did not recruit children.
A significant majority of the children killed in Gaza did not die because they were used as human shields or because they worked for Hamas. They were killed because the IDF bombed, shelled or fired at them, their families or their apartment buildings. That is why the blood of Gaza's children is on our hands, not on Hamas' hands, and we will never be able to escape that responsibility.
The children of Gaza who survive this war will remember it. It is enough to watch Nazareth-born Juliano Mer Khamis' wonderful movie "Arna's Children" to understand what thrives amid the blood and ruin we are leaving behind. The film shows the children of Jenin - who have seen less horror than those of Gaza - growing up to be fighters and suicide bombers.
A child who has seen his house destroyed, his brother killed and his father humiliated will not forgive.
The last time I was allowed to visit Gaza, in November 2006, I went to the Indira Gandhi nursery school in Beit Lahia. The schoolchildren drew what they had seen the previous day: an IDF missile striking their school bus, killing their teacher, Najwa Halif, in front of their eyes. They were in shock. It is possible some of them have now been killed or wounded themselves."
"
Olmert is a buffoon:
"Olmert, look for new digs
Haaretz
Condoleezza Rice has enough reasons to be angry with us for falsely promising to dismantle illegal outposts - a promise that was never kept. But if she felt deceived, at least she didn't say so publicly.
We have had dealings with hostile presidents, and some of our prime ministers didn't get along very well with presidents who were not fans of the Zionist movement. But the U.S. administration in effect calling Olmert a liar, if not worse, is something new that does not bode well for our relations with the next president.
Olmert's public disclosure about how he called Bush 10 minutes before the Security Council vote, and how the president, who was in the middle of a speech, left the podium, got Rice on the phone and told her to abstain, is pretty embarrassing. Although on second thought, once they were at it, why didn't she vote no? The White House, furious, has claimed that Olmert's remarks are "100 percent not true"
More from Haaretz:
"The military force that Israel has applied in the past three weeks does not permit it to ignore the terrible suffering experienced by the residents of Gaza. The "humanitarian corridors" are insufficient. The three or four "mercy hours" leave little chance of delivering convoys of supplies or distributing needed items to the population that is now under direct Israeli occupation.
There will be no harm to the war effort or to Israel's security if it opens the border crossings for the continuous flow of supplies and medicines. In any case, the policy of economic sanctions Israel imposed contributed to nothing and did not avoid the need to go to war. Even the concern that the opening of the crossings to the transfer of goods would strengthen Hamas' ability to hold out in the war is not valid. Hamas is not fighting Israel for bread, and in any case the collapse of Hamas is no longer a declared aim of the war.
Morally and in terms of international law, so long as there is no sovereign rule in the Gaza Strip, Israel is responsible for the fate of 1.5 million civilians there. More importantly, disease, poverty and unemployment are the fertilizer in the greenhouse that grows the desperation and the radicalism that brought Hamas to power. Israel is the one that will reap the hatred and fear that Operation Cast Lead will sow in the hearts of the children of Gaza. These are the neighbors with whom Israel will have to reach a peace agreement and live next to for generations to come."
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian:
"A Palestinian woman is standing in her kitchen when she hears a deafening bang. Rushing to her living room she sees her family in pieces, spread across floors, walls and ceiling. The horror is total and meaningless. Nobody meant it to happen, so what was its cause?
The tragedy in Gaza surely marks the time when the world declares air-launched bombs and long-distance shells to be illegal under the 1983 Geneva convention. They should be on a par with chemical munitions, white phosphorous, cluster bombs and delayed-action land mines. They pose a threat to non-combatants that should be intolerable even in the miserable context of war.
I can accept Israeli claims that they are not intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza - or the United Nations base set on fire yesterday. But the failure of their chosen armaments had the same effect. The civilian death toll is now put at 673, mostly women and children.
It is barely conceivable that the most accurate weapon of war, an infantryman, would deliberately enter a house and massacre unarmed women and children as they have their dinner. As a result, mercifully few do. When such cold-blooded murder is committed, from the 1968 My Lai killings in Vietnam to those now coming to light in Iraq, we are appalled, and inquiries, trials and disciplinary procedures follow."
Civilian loss is tragic, but there's some nonsense logic from Jenkins. A (completely unenforcable) ban on air-launched bombs and long-distance shells seem to not leave anythng to a modern army beyond small calibre bullets. Maybe we should ban bullets, and leave them with machetes? As we all learned in the 90s, you can't do too much harm with machetes.
Jenkins advocates leaving urban battles to that precision instrument, infantry. Well, one time the Israelis tried that (exposing their own forces to great loss becuase of their humanitarian concern for Palestinian civilians) they were falsely accused of a massacre. Ask yourself what Jenin means to most people today - massacre, or propagandistic slur?
Jenin 'Massacre evidence' growing
BBC News
18/04/02
Expert weighs up Jenin 'massacre'
BBC News
29/04/02
Palestinians confirm no Jenin 'massacre'
World Net Daily
July 14, 2003
The Battle of Jenin
Wikipedia
The Big Jenin Lie
Weekly Standard
05/08/2002
Screenwriter Daniel Gordan's description of the ax-grinding media in action is also worth a click. My favorite part is his description of this encounter between CNN's Sheila MacVicar and an Israeli soldier in Jenin: "One [Israeli] reservist sensed MacVicar's hostility. He was a soft-spoken man who approached her and introduced himself as the reserve unit's medical officer, Dr. David Zangen. He told her that when the fighting was over, they found photograph albums of children from roughly 6 years of age up through early and mid-teens. It was an album of photos of children who would be the next crop of suicide killers, with notations indicating when each of the children would be ripe. The reporter had no time for the doctor, however.
Misanthropytoday.com - what a great domain name.
Who can pick any holes in Mr Lipschitz's argument in his Open letter to Annie Lennox?
JP what did you think of this part of Gideon Levy's Haaretz article?
"One can say Hamas hides among the civilian population, as if the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv is not located in the heart of a civilian population, as if there are places in Gaza that are not in the heart of a civilian population. One can also claim that Hamas uses children as human shields, as if in the past our own organizations fighting to establish a country did not recruit children."
New York Times: "Israel Announces Cease-Fire in Gaza
Israel announced a unilateral cease-fire on Saturday evening
in the three-week-old war in Gaza that has killed at least
1,200 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert told Israelis in a televised address: "The conditions
have been created that our aims, as declared, were attained
fully, and beyond."
It will be interesting to see if the terms of the cease-fire address the doubts of the analyst below:
"This raises a question that every Israeli and its supporters now needs to ask. What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain strategic or grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it made from selectively striking key Hamas facilities early in the war. In fact, their silence raises haunting questions about whether they will repeat the same massive failures made by Israel’s top political leadership during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in 2006. Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?
To blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. To paraphrase a comment about the British government’s management of the British Army in World War I, lions seem to be led by donkeys. If Israel has a credible ceasefire plan that could really secure Gaza, it is not apparent. If Israel has a plan that could credibly destroy and replace Hamas, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to help the Gazans and move them back towards peace, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to use US or other friendly influence productively, it not apparent."
Re: Gideon Levy's article
To take an analogy to the Gaza operation: I would be mighty surprised to find that in 1948, when Israel was invaded by Arab armies, that the new-born IDF would deliberately seek the spot most populated by jewish civilians to site their artillery, as opposed to the spot least populated. The reasons are obvious: they did not regard their own people as cannon fodder to a political cause (on the contrary, their cause was to protect such people from harm), their soldiers were not dressed as civilians (and so had nothing to be gained by merging into the civilian population), and in any case they knew that the invading armies were trying to maximise, not minimise, Israeli civilan casualties.
I think where you site the Defence Ministry and where you site a portable rocket launcher are somewhat different issues.
I would be interested to find out more about this "Israel recruited children" claim. Whatever truth there might be in that, I'm confident you won't find any equivalent of Hamas' hate-filled kill-a-jew indoctrination of toddlers.
----------------
Re: the ceasefire. I am persuaded (to a large degree by Pipes) that first Sharon, and then Olmert, have made fucking stupid policy decisions in the past. It would not therefore surprise me to find out that this latest action turns out to be another one.
Re Pipes, I noticed he questioned the strike by Israel, as he thinks Hamas pose a 'relatively trivial threat.'
Israeli Newspaper Haaretz "reflects on the war:
"In going to war, every country has its objective. As Carl von Clausewitz has shown, a military victory cannot serve as a goal in its own right. Its significance is purely tactical. Some great military victories ended in a national catastrophe for the victors, starting with Hannibal's victory over the Romans, which was one of the greatest triumphs in history, and ending with the Six-Day War, which was a brilliant victory that ended in a historic disaster.
So the public, still dazzled by the success of the current retaliatory campaign achieved at a horrible human price, needs to be reminded that victory is measured by its political results, and the real objective is peace. In this context, it is interesting to see that despite its military defeat, Hamas has already secured a number of achievements that will help it in the future; it has already been recognized by the United Nations Security Council as the dominant force in Gaza, and even though it is a terrorist organization, it leaves the war as the victim.
This was caused by our daily use of enormous firepower, which may have been necessary at the tactical level, but before long caused a shift in world opinion, even among friendly governments. It appears that even though Hamas operated from within population centers, most television viewers shudder when they see the bodies of Gaza's slain children.
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And so the United States and France could not afford to appear at the UN as ignoring the killing of civilians in Gaza. In choosing between Israeli indifference and public opinion in their countries, both presidents elected to align themselves with the latter. In Washington, George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice explicitly wanted to turn their backs on Israel's policy as the final chord of their term in office. In so doing, they paved the way for the incoming president.
Let's not forget that not all the difficult questions have been asked. The horror in Gaza has not fully penetrated Israelis' minds. For example, was it necessary to kill the wives and children of senior Hamas operative Nizar Ghayan, or the civilians who took refuge at the UNRWA school? The deaths of whole families, including children, will burden our conscience. This war will go down as the most violent and brutal in our history."
Another interesting article from Brendan O'Neill (this may be old news to some, but wasn't to me):
"Making Enemies
How Israel helped to create Hamas
In the bloody street struggle between Hamas and Fatah for control of the Palestinian territories—a civil war in all but name—Israel is firmly pinning its hopes on a Fatah victory. It sees its old enemies in Fatah as far preferable to Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and whose members still occasionally blow themselves up on streets and buses inside the Jewish state.
Fatah has been a thorn in Israel’s side for over 40 years. It is the largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization, and its name is a reverse acronym of the Arabic title Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini, which literally translates “Palestinian National Liberation Movement.” But Israel is ready to overlook all that and is making moves toward its old secular, nationalist opponents—“Arafat’s men”—in an attempt to isolate what it sees as the cosmically minded religious extremists of Hamas."
[...]
"But there is something bitterly ironic in Israel’s support for Fatah against Hamas—and it should be a lesson to governments everywhere that meddle in other states’ affairs. In the past, Israel supported Hamas against Fatah. Indeed, in the 1970s and 80s, Israel played a not insignificant role in encouraging Hamas’s emergence in the belief that such an Islamist group might help rupture support for the mass nationalist movement of Fatah. Twenty years later, Israel has switched sides, hoping that it can encourage Fatah to see off Hamas. It wants “moderate” Palestinians to take on the “extremist” Palestinians it helped create. Like America and Britain before it—both of whom have supported and armed Islamist movements in the Middle East in attempts to undermine secular nationalist parties—Israel is learning the hard way that it is one thing to let radical Islamists off the leash but quite another thing to rein them back in again. If you make monsters, you shouldn’t be surprised if they come back to bite you."
[...]
"when there was open conflict between Israeli forces and Palestinian nationalists, Israeli officials gave the nod to and even indirectly funded the establishment of Islamic societies in the West Bank and Gaza that might weaken the Palestine Liberation Organization. Martha Kessler, a senior analyst for the CIA, has said, “[W]e saw Israel cultivate Islam as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalism.” The very Islamic groups “cultivated” by Israel in the 1970s became Hamas in the 1980s, which went on to become Israel’s biggest nightmare in the 1990s. It remains so today.'
[...]
"Israel was much more lenient, even permissive in its attitude towards the Islamists. One of the first actions taken by Israel after its victory in the 1967 war was to release from prison various Muslim Brotherhood activists, including Ahmed Yassin, future founder of Hamas. Yassin and others had been jailed by the Egyptian authorities after the Muslim Brotherhood tried to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the anti-colonialist and pan-Arabist who considered political Islam a threat and an anachronism and was fairly unforgiving in his treatment of its practitioners. Israel, by contrast, sensing that such radical Islamists might be helpful in undermining Arab nationalists like the Nasser-influenced Fatah in the Palestinian territories released the Islamists from their cells and encouraged them to take root in Palestinian society."
[...]
"In playing the same game as the Brits and Americans—the “devil’s game”—Israel created its own gravediggers. Israel’s encouragement of Hamas’s emergence to counter secular nationalism represented an attack on the idea of popular and secular democracy, so it is not surprising that Hamas retains its somewhat extreme religious leanings and suspicion of traditional politics.
From Egypt to Palestine to Afghanistan, the explicit aim of Western and Israeli support for radical Islamism has been to isolate, weaken, and ultimately destroy popular political movements that very often were based on Western ideas of democracy and progress. Israel is now trying to rein in the consequences of its earlier actions by encouraging Fatah to take on Hamas, which is a recipe for further conflict and division in the Palestinian territories."
Peter Hitchens posts a final thought on Israel's attack on Gaza:
"I was told repeatedly by apologists for this stupid misconceived attack that the principal reason for it was to stop the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel. It now seems quite clear that the attack has failed to stop these attacks, as I said it would. A few weeks from now, and the rockets will be back as a regular event, while Hamas remains in control of the Strip. But the dead, especially the innocents, will remain dead, and Israel's image in the western world will remain tarnished. What do these people say now?"
Haaretz's columnist Gideon Levy reflects on the war and it's aftermath:
"Gideon Levy / Gaza war ended in utter failure for Israel
By Gideon Levy
On the morrow of the return of the last Israeli soldier from Gaza, we can determine with certainty that they had all gone out there in vain. This war ended in utter failure for Israel.
This goes beyond the profound moral failure, which is a grave matter in itself, but pertains to its inability to reach its stated goals. In other words, the grief is not complemented by failure. We have gained nothing in this war save hundreds of graves, some of them very small, thousands of maimed people, much destruction and the besmirching of Israel's image.
What seemed like a predestined loss to only a handful of people at the onset of the war will gradually emerge as such to many others, once the victorious trumpeting subsides.
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The initial objective of the war was to put an end to the firing of Qassam rockets. This did not cease until the war's last day. It was only achieved after a cease-fire had already been arranged. Defense officials estimate that Hamas still has 1,000 rockets.
The war's second objective, the prevention of smuggling, was not met either. The head of the Shin Bet security service has estimated that smuggling will be renewed within two months.
Most of the smuggling that is going on is meant to provide food for a population under siege, and not to obtain weapons. But even if we accept the scare campaign concerning the smuggling with its exaggerations, this war has served to prove that only poor quality, rudimentary weapons passed through the smuggling tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip to Egypt.
Israel's ability to achieve its third objective is also dubious. Deterrence, my foot. The deterrence we supposedly achieved in the Second Lebanon War has not had the slightest effect on Hamas, and the one supposedly achieved now isn't working any better: The sporadic firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip has continued over the past few days.
The fourth objective, which remained undeclared, was not met either. The IDF has not restored its capability. It couldn't have, not in a quasi-war against a miserable and poorly-equipped organization relying on makeshift weapons, whose combatants barely put up a fight.
The heroic descriptions and victory poems written abut the "military triumph" will not serve to change reality. The pilots were flying on training missions and the ground forces were engaged in exercises that involved joining up and firing weapons.
The describing of the operation as a "military achievement" by the various generals and analysts who offered their take on the operation is plain ridiculous.
We have not weakened Hamas. The vast majority of its combatants were not harmed and popular support for the organization has in fact increased. Their war has intensified the ethos of resistance and determined endurance. A country which has nursed an entire generation on the ethos of a few versus should know to appreciate that by now. There was no doubt as to who was David and who was Goliath in this war.
The population in Gaza, which has sustained such a severe blow, will not become more moderate now. On the contrary, the national sentiment will now turn more than before against the party which inflicted that blow - the State of Israel. Just as public opinion leans to the right in Israel after each attack against us, so it will in Gaza following the mega-attack that we carried out against them.
If anyone was weakened because of this war, it was Fatah, whose fleeing from Gaza and its abandonment have now been given special significance. The succession of failures in this war needs to include, of course, the failure of the siege policy. For a while, we have already come to realize that is ineffective. The world boycotted, Israel besieged and Hamas ruled (and is still ruling).
But this war's balance, as far as Israel is concerned, does not end with the absence of any achievement. It has placed a heavy toll on us, which will continue to burden us for some time. When it comes to assessing Israel's international situation, we must not allow ourselves to be fooled by the support parade by Europe's leaders, who came in for a photo-op with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Israel's actions have dealt a serious blow to public support for the state. While this does not always translate itself into an immediate diplomatic situation, the shockwaves will arrive one day. The whole world saw the images. They shocked every human being who saw them, even if they left most Israelis cold.
The conclusion is that Israel is a violent and dangerous country, devoid of all restraints and blatantly ignoring the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, while not giving a hoot about international law. The investigations are on their way.
Graver still is the damage this will visit upon our moral spine. It will come from difficult questions about what the IDF did in Gaza, which will occur despite the blurring effect of recruited media.
So what was achieved, after all? As a war waged to satisfy considerations of internal politics, the operation has succeeded beyond all expectations. Likud Chair Benjamin Netanyahu is getting stronger in the polls. And why? Because we could not get enough of the war."
Where are your bets, gentlemen, on where this one will go?
Gazan doctor says death toll inflated
YNet News
22/01/09
What really is behind the numbers reported on the number of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip? Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported Thursday that a doctor working in Gaza's Shifa Hospital claimed that Hamas has intentionally inflated the number of casualties resulting from Israel's Operation Cast Lead.
"The number of deceased stands at no more than 500 to 600. Most of them are youths between the ages of 17 to 23 who were recruited to the ranks of Hamas, who sent them to the slaughter," according to the newspaper article. The doctor wished to remain unidentified, out of fear for his life.
...
A Tal al-Hawa resident told the newspaper's reporter, "Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn't do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes." The reporter for the Italian newspaper also quoted reporters in the Strip who told of Hamas' exaggerated figures, "We have already said to Hamas commanders – why do you insist on inflating the number of victims?"
These same reporters mentioned that the truth that will come out is likely to be similar to what occurred in Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin. "Then, there was first talk of 1,500 deaths. But then it turned out that there were only 54, 45 of which were armed men," the Palestinian reporters told the Italian newspaper.
These new figures must be treated with caution especially in light of the fact that various official sources in the Gaza Strip, including United Nations and Red Cross officials, have reported that more than 1,300 people were killed and some 5,000 wounded during the three weeks of fighting in the coastal strip. Palestinian sources claim that three-quarters of the dead were unarmed civilians.
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more...
Thoughtful article and not a perspective I read often.
As a distracting aside: the idea (not the author's) that a kill ratio of 100:1 equals a life-value ratio of 1:100 is nonsense of course (logically that would require that any war necessarily kills an equal life-value of humans on each side).
Gaza has been hit hard, but has it made any difference?
Tim Butcher
Telegraph
20/1/09
I knew Gaza well before the attacks, so on the day the ceasefire was announced, I was able to see for myself
...
The death toll is staggering, but what many Gazans find most amazing is the ratio of Israeli war dead to Palestinian. For each of the 13 Israelis (three civilians and ten soldiers) who died during operation Cast Lead, more than a hundred Palestinians died. "Is an Israeli life really worth a hundred of us?" asked a hawker called Mahmoud, next to a bombed mosque.
I knew Gaza well before the attacks, so when Israel ended its ban on foreign journalists reaching Gaza on the day the ceasefire was announced, I was able to see for myself.
One thing was clear. Gaza City 2009 is not Stalingrad 1944. There had been no carpet bombing of large areas, no firebombing of complete suburbs. Targets had been selected and then hit, often several times, but almost always with precision munitions. Buildings nearby had been damaged and there had been some clear mistakes, like the firebombing of the UN aid headquarters. But, in most the cases, I saw the primary target had borne the brunt.
You can argue about the merits of the targets. For me, it seemed clumsy to bomb the parliament building, a place that supposedly symbolises the power of democracy, rather than the power of one particular party. And just across the road from Shifa, the biggest hospital in Gaza, a mosque had been "surgically" destroyed – even though Israeli military planners must have known the terror the attack would inflict on the patients nearby, and the collateral damage on the hospital infrastructure.
And I wondered what military threat was posed by the ministerial compound in Tel el Howa, home to tower blocks housing various government departments. The damage was breathtaking, with entire high-rises pancaked down to nothing.
On the rural fringes of Gaza City it was a different story. The Israeli ground forces had caused what in some places can be described as "ultra-cautious localised carnage''. Paranoid about taking casualties, they sent in tanks and combat bulldozers, knocking aside whatever stood in their way – houses, farms, vehicles or property. It was a case of "shoot first, then shoot some more and maybe then ask questions". The loss of civilian life in places like Zeitoun, where at least 48 members of the Samouni family were killed, was horrendous.
But, for the most part, I was struck by how cosmetically unchanged Gaza appeared to be. It has been a tatty, poorly-maintained mess for decades and the presence of fresh bombsites on streets already lined with broken kerbstones and jerry-built buildings did not make any great difference. And the same can be said for the mindset of many of Gaza's 1.5 million residents. Outsiders might have expected some sort of collective anger at the loss of life, or mass outrage at the Hamas authorities whose policy of firing rockets against Israel had brought down the wrath of the Israeli armed forces.
But I found that, so steeped is the Gazan mindset in the narrative of victimhood, there was no internally-focused groundswell of anger at what had happened. Palestinians in Gaza have felt victims since 1948, when a small number of locals were suddenly swamped by a larger number of refugees, forced to flee land taken by Israel at the creation of the Jewish State. For 60 years they have dwelled on victimhood, a supplicant people grown dependent on foreign aid and reliant on the role Israel plays as the scapegoat for all ills.
more...
The YNET news piece reminded me of this great bit of writing from George Orwell:
"But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side"
First time I've seen this fascinating idea: the only solution will be widening the buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza by a few kilometers
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It All Depends on Egypt
Ronen Bergman
January 16, 2009
...
Hamas, Israel hopes, now understands that the rules were changed, that from now on any rocket fired on Israeli civilians will be retaliated against with disproportional force and thus will hesitate to open fire again. I believe this is a realistic goal. Hamas was indeed delivered a severe, yet far from fatal, blow, and it will not wish to risk its forces in their current fragile state for any cause other than a paramount one. Note that despite Hezbollah’s victory over Israel in 2006, Hassan Nasrallah’s men are keeping the peace along the border, a reality very different from the prewar state of affairs.
...
The other factor is the level of Egyptian resolve to act against the arms smuggling from its territory into the Gaza Strip. Given the Israeli command over all aerial and naval routes to the strip, the ground rout from Egypt remains Hamas’s lifeline. Only the Egyptians can cut it.
The memorandum of understanding signed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni this morning is of no real effect. It mentions international bodies that will act against the arms smuggling, but they are unlikely to intervene. For example, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, general secretary of NATO, which is mentioned in the memorandum, told me himself about a month ago that his forces will not be stationed in the Middle East. Moreover, the U.N. observers stationed in Lebanon since 2006 prevent only some arms smuggling to Hezbollah, and, according to Israeli intelligence, Hezbollah is far better equipped than it was in 2006.
Any agreement signed by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas will also be of no consequence. What will matter is Egypt’s conduct alone. ... Egypt’s efforts to prevent the arms smuggling have been harshly criticized by the Israeli General Security Service. Bottom line is, according to the security service, that Egypt intentionally shies away this task. Mubarak’s regime dreads a confrontation with Hamas as it may lead to outbursts by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic opposition. Egypt denies the allegations. Even so, the vast amount of weaponry, advanced rockets and antitank missiles used by Hamas against Israeli forces did not materialize out of thin air.
The arms smuggling into the strip means a quick rebuilding of Hamas’s infrastructure and weaponry stocks. The prevention of arms smuggling calls for a complete change of approach by Egypt, and a lot more of its resources put into it.
Moreover, Israel itself did not manage to stop the smuggling completely when its troops were stationed along the border. The only solution will be widening the buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza by a few kilometers, making a border line that will make tunnel-digging an enormous, almost impossible, effort. On the ground, the area should be cleared so the tunnels’ air and escape shafts will be clearly visible. All that, in addition to high-tech detectors that can be supplied by the West, will, at the very least, decrease the amount of arms smuggled, and, in a direct relationship, reduce the possibility of another violent outburst in the world’s most explosive area.
Peter Hitchens on the similarities (or non-similarities) between Gaza and Northern Ireland:
"Anyway, to "Shang", who seems strangely fixated on the method of delivery of terrorist bombs. The fact is that the response of Britain to IRA bombs was often as futile and misdirected as Israel's (let's not discuss it here, I'm sick of the topic, we lost the war) but the option of a military attack on an urban area, in which innocents would certainly be killed was not available, because there was never a Northern Irish Gaza. All the territory in Ireland was either under British sovereignty, or under the sovereignty of the Irish Republic. Israel has uniquely ( and deliberately, through its unilateral, non-negotiated withdrawal) created a new form of entity, a non-state actor, immune from state pressure, which nonetheless has effective control of a piece of territory. The IRA had no comparable site from which it could aim rockets at British cities, without immediately attracting a response from the sovereign state from whose territory the missiles were fired..
Also ,if Britain had adopted such a method, or a comparable one, it would have been as stupid to do so as Israel was. The folly of sending paratroops to deal with a street protest in Londonderry in 1972 is perhaps the closest we can come to this. Using Paratroopers for crowd control is like using a steamroller to make pancakes. They are soldiers trained to kill with devastating effect. The disastrous massacre which resulted from this absurd deployment effectively created the Provisional IRA, was devastating to Britain's reputation in the USA, and is certainly one of the reasons for Britain's ultimate defeat in Northern Ireland. This was not the consequence of military weakness or intelligence failures, by the way, but of US (and EU) pressure on Britain to surrender, the same pressure which Israel will be getting from the Obama White House, sooner than Israel thinks."
More comment from Peter Hitchens on Gaza:
"Once again in response to "Shang" (23rd January, 3.09 pm)
I am scolded for being 'long-winded' (look, this is my blog, I'll be as long-winded as I like) by someone whose posting then runs to more than 600 words. So I'll try to be pithy in my response. But first, I really do not want to reopen the general discussions(which took place on earlier threads going back into the December archives, still open to all) on the origins of the dispute and the 'right' of Israel to exist. I'd only say that no such 'right' exists for any country, but we should rather concentrate on how *wrong* it would be, once a nation is established, to seek to wipe it off the map.
Several points. First, blatant misrepresentation and irrational emotionalism will always be derided on this site. I have never said, because I do not think it, that rocket fire is "harmless". That is plainly false. My argument has always been about whether the attack on Gaza is a rational or effective response to it. Unable to challenge this point, some of my critics have resorted to emotionalism. I am unmoved. Mr "Shang" has resorted to blatant misrepresentation. I think he should apologise. Oh, and where and what is the "Via De La Rosa"? having spent quite a lot of time in Jerusalem, and much more than a week in Israel, I have never yet come across this charming-sounding thoroughfare.
I have no 'Afrikaner friends', one of Mr "Shang's" more peculiar suggestions.. Like most British people, I have always opposed Apartheid, and the Afrikaners have, at least since the Boer Wars, regarded the British as their principal enemies. The Apartheid state was a conscious repudiation of Britain, including the declaration of a Republic and the rejection of the British Crown. Don't these people know anything? Apartheid South Africa did not lose a 'war against terror'. They lost (in their case deservedly) the battle for world public opinion, and the battle for US support. The end of the Cold War stopped them being useful to the USA. After that they suddenly found that they had to choose between bankruptcy and surrender, and that American support, once apparently solid, could not be relied upon any more. Israel, through actions such as the Gaza attack, could likewise find itself bereft of US support. Ex-President jimmy Carter is already going round claiming that Israel is a sort of apartheid state. Attacks on the US-Israel alliance are gaining in strength in the USA.
My criticism of the attack on Gaza is mainly focused on the fact that the sort of behaviour exhibited in Gaza will result in Israel losing the war for survival in the long run, by helping its enemies smear it. The idea that I in some way envy Israel is baseless and absurd.
Britain lost its war against the IRA because its foreign 'allies', notably the USA, where Britain lost the battle for public opinion, forced it to give in. I may not like these facts, but that makes no difference to my ability to understand them, and see parallels. Israel is most unwise to imagine that America has eternal friendships. No country does. Britain certainly didn't when she was a great power.
No, by 'public opinion' I do not mean Ken Livingstone or Annie Lennox, though 'Shang' would be foolish to imagine that one of Britain's most successful politicians and a major rock star are not powerful allies for any cause they espouse, in this shallow age. I mean many millions of entirely average people who seldom think about the subject at all, but who adopt opinions out of fashion and will in future find it fashionable to be anti-Israel.
Mr "Shang" then turns to the subject of Dresden "And in regards to Dresden, you accuse me of being fixated?".
No, actually, I accused him of being fixated on the method of delivery of terrorist bombs.
His remarks on World war Two are incoherent, and do not appear to be informed by any great knowledge of the origins, conduct or outcome of that war (thios is common among people who try to use it as a precedent).They end in a statement posed as a question, which verges upon the unhinged :"" Now Israel wants a harmless and neutered Palestine, that means eradicating any resistance or thoughts of rebellion, crushing their will to resist so to speak, what's wrong with that?"
If Mr "Shang" doesn't know what is wrong with it, then I don't expect I can explain it to him.
Some points on the Second World War. In its early stages, was in many ways a war for American public opinion, with Churchill using all his skills to try to bring the USA in on Britain's side. Britain's role as a major power, paradoxically, ended the moment the USA did join the war. From that moment, the British Empire was finished and Britain ceded its place to the USA, a cession emphasised by Roosevelt and Stalin's scornful treatment of Churchill at the Teheran summit.
This decline may have been inevitable, but Britain's combination of military weakness and incompetent diplomacy in the 1936-1939 period certainly made it happen much sooner than it would otherwise have done. Whatever Britain went to war for in 1939 (can anyone remember?), those aims were not fulfilled. Yet Britain ended the war bankrupt and stripped of its Empire - a funny sort of victory.
I do not think that heavy bombing of German civilian targets ( which the RAF did not properly begin until February 1942, after Germany had declared war on the USA) would have aided the British cause much if it had begun earlier, while the USA was still neutral. In fact in the early stages of the war, the bombing of civilian targets was banned by the British government, and regarded with great horror by almost everyone at every level. The German bombing of London and other British cities (including my father's home city of Portsmouth) was rightly regarded by civilised people everywhere as barbaric, and in my view greatly aided Britain's effort to get US help ( see the closing scene in Hitchcock's great film 'Foreign Correspondent', where the American journalist hero broadcasts from a London under bombardment, a great piece of propaganda for Roosevelt's pro-British policy).
The bombing of Dresden made no material difference to the outcome of the war in Europe. It did make a permanent difference to Britain's reputation for chivalry in war, which continues to do moral damage more than 60 years later. No, not a game where one is keeping score, but a very serious matter, where what you do will come back to haunt you later when you are not expecting it.
I might add that in Israel itself, there is a growing chorus of people agreeing with me, that the attack has not destroyed Hamas. The Left point out that the action hasn't had this effect, the Right rage that there should have been more bombing(see an interesting report in 'The (London) Times' of 23rd January) . Needless to say, the Right's 'solution' would not have worked, merely been a bigger and more costly propaganda disaster, but the point is that everyone is now recognising that the thing itself has failed on its own terms.
This of course makes stuff about how horrible the rockets are ( which I entirely accept, contrary to the insinuations of my more militant critics) quite irrelevant. They will continue to fall. The operation has not stopped them for good. It could never have done so. Therefore the misery caused by the rockets cannot be advanced as part of the argument for the action.
Posted by: Peter Hitchens | 24 January 2009 at 11:37 AM"
Oh, for fuck's sake. I hope the IDF bomb these twats too, then. Not the famous cathedral though - you can see that from the cricket ground where Bradman scored 4 hundreds (3 double) in 4 innings.
Worcester on verge of being twinned with Gaza
Telegraph
26 Feb 2009
Even the UN themselves complained, sotto voce. Not a lot of coverage of this on mainstream media (or have I missed it?)
UN relief agency in Gaza condemns confiscation of aid by Hamas officials
United Nations Radio News Service
04/02/09
"I told you so" from P. Hitchens. "So why did Israel stop on 18 Jan?", others might ask.
Israel tells UN it will respond to rockets
Ynet news
03.02.09
"Since Israel declared a unilateral hold-fire on 18 January 2009, there have been nearly 100 rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip"
Well, Hitchens "I told you so" is right (you know it and I know it) Israel were never going to achieve their objective whether they stopped on 18 Jan or the 18 Feb... or 18 March for that matter. All that continuing longer would have achieved is to make them even more screwed diplomatically...
talking of which...
Here's Melanie Phillips on the recent America pledge to give $900 million for the rebuilding of Gaza:
"There has never been a situation like this. ‘Surreal’, as Daniel Pipes expostulates, just doesn’t begin to describe what America, Britain and Europe are doing in Gaza. America has pledged $900 million for the ‘rebuilding’ of Gaza; at the ‘donors’ conference at Sharm el Sheikh yesterday, pledges from more than 70 states including Europe and Britain swelled that total to more than $4.4 billion. The beleaguered British taxpayer may be rather surprised to know that bankrupt Britain is throwing £30 million at the place.
These governments all piously intone that the money will not end up in the hands of Hamas. This is utterly absurd. Hamas run Gaza. They control it. Nothing happens there without their say-so. UNRWA, which is apparently supposed to distribute the humanitarian aid, is riddled with Hamas operatives amongst its staff; Hamas won more than 80 percent of the vote in the last election for the UNRWA workers association and the UNRWA teachers association.
To avoid the money going to Hamas, we are told with a straight face, aid is to be funnelled through the Palestinian Authority. But the PA are in the West Bank. They are not in Gaza. Hamas run Gaza. The PA have no more power to stop that money from ending up in the pockets of Hamas than they have of flying to the moon.
Who can doubt that the $4.4 billion will go straight to Hamas so that it can buy yet more rockets and missiles and construct yet more death-dealing factories to enable them to bombard Israel and kill the innocent?"
Fascinating tales of Palestinians torturing each other in Hamas v Fatah turf wars, even while Israelis attack.
BBC Today Program
01/04/09
0837: Officials from the two biggest Palestinian factions have returned to the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to resume reconciliation talks. Correspondent Aleem Maqbool reports on accusations from human rights groups that both Fatah and Hamas are guilty of widespread abuses of power.
BBC Mideast Editor Guilty of Inaccuracy on Israel
BBC's Mideast editor rebuked for breaching impartiality and accuracy rules.Honest Reporting
17 April 2009
...
Here is but a small selection of Bowen's litany of bias in recent years:
May 2006: Failing to assign any responsibility to the Palestinians for intra-Palestinian violence in the Gaza Strip, Bowen still refers to "the pressure that never goes away, which comes from the Israeli occupation," despite Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.
Jan 2007: Former Times columnist and current Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard acquires a leaked e-mail from Bowen to BBC staff revealing his slanted analysis, which also came under fire from the Wall Street Journal. As Pollard states: "Indeed, Israel is to blame for almost everything. The Palestinians are not responsible for anything; Israel is the culpable party. He has contempt for every Israeli politician he mentions; Ehud Barak, for instance, is described as having killed "various Palestinians", written as if he did so for the sake of it. If this is what passes for high-level analysis at the BBC, is it any wonder its reporting is so poisonous?"
Jan 2007: Bowen produces an unbalanced radio report questioning whether a two-state solution is still a realistic prospect. Failing to acknowledge Israeli security concerns, Palestinian suicide bombers or intra-Palestinian violence and chaos, Bowen discusses restrictions on Palestinian movement and the security barrier near Bethlehem, as well as "illegal" Israeli settlement in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Feb 2007: As a result of these examples and continuing BBC bias, the UK's Zionist Federation calls for Bowen's removal as Mideast editor.
Dec 2007: Again, attributing sole responsibility for Palestinian hardship to Israel, Bowen claims that a major reason for the economic problems are: "because of measures Israel has imposed, which it says are vital to the security of its people, that put real difficulties in the way of Palestinians moving. It's impossible, pretty much, to get out of Gaza - it's often described by Palestinians as a prison and I think that's pretty accurate; and there are areas of the West Bank... which are not much better than that."
May 2008: HonestReporting thoroughly critiques Bowen's BBC documentary "The Birth of Israel". Full of omissions and historical revisionism, Bowen either downplays, delegitimizes or altogether ignores the legitimate roots of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel going back three millennia. Instead, the Arabs are painted as victims of Jewish power and malevolence.
March 2009: Bowen keeps a running diary during the Gaza conflict. In one entry, he publicizes a shocking claim made by a Palestinian woman that her husband and 4-year-old son had been shot in cold blood by Israeli soldiers. This, despite no supporting evidence or any other media coverage of such a serious charge.
Admitting Israel's Unilateral Withdrawals a Mistake
by Daniel Pipes
On the one hand - go Hamas, you guys are dudes! On the other hand, I always said Hamas weren't Islamist enough. On the final hand, the Zionists probably are behind this declaration of an Islamic Emirate in Gaza. Tricky, isn't it?
I do note that hiding in a mosque in this case was no proof against attack.
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Mosque gun battle rages in Gaza
BBC News
Friday, 14 August 2009
At least 13 people have been killed and at least 60 injured in a fierce gun battle in Gaza, emergency services say. Eyewitnesses say hundreds of Hamas fighters and policemen surrounded a mosque where followers of a radical Islamist cleric were holed up. They fired rocket-propelled grenades at the mosque and surrounded the leader's house in Rafah, near the Egypt border.
...
Earlier, during Friday prayers, hundreds of worshippers at Ibn-Taymiyah mosque declared Gaza an "Islamic emirate". The mosque's imam - Abdul-Latif Moussa - and armed supporters swore to fight to the death rather than hand over authority of the mosque to Hamas.
During his own Friday sermon, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, dismissed Mr Moussa's comments. "These declarations [of an Islamic emirate] are aimed towards incitement against the Gaza Strip and an attempt at recruiting an international alliance against the Gaza Strip. "And we warn those who are behind these Israeli Zionist declarations: the Gaza Strip only contains its people."
Jund Ansar Allah (Army of the Helpers of God) gained some prominence two months ago when it staged a failed attack on a border crossing between Gaza and Israel. The group is very critical of Hamas, which governs Gaza, accusing the Islamist group of not being Islamist enough.
Hamas has cracked down on al-Qaeda-inspired groups in the past. It is concerned they may attract more extremist members, and has forbidden anyone except what it describes as Hamas security personnel from carrying weapons in Gaza.
An example of Ken's tough questioning:
KL: Are you committed to the destruction of Israel?
KM: What is really happening is the destruction of the Palestinian people by Israel; it is the one that occupies our land and exiles us, kills us, incarcerates us and persecutes our people. We are the victims, Israel is the oppressor, and not vice versa.
Exclusive: Hamas leader interview
New Statesman
17 September 2009
In a world exclusive, Ken Livingstone discusses religion, violence and the chances for peace with the Hamas leader Khaled Meshal
I should put together a separate thread on the Goldstone Report. But in the meantime I just came across this astonishing speech at the UN defending the IDF, given by the ex-British army officer Colonel Richard Kemp - it's just 3 mins long, and I commend it to you. To say he doesn't mince his words is something of an understatement, as this excerpt shows:
I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee. Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
Video - 3'06": UK Commander Challenges Goldstone Report
UN Watch Oral Statement
Colonel Richard Kemp
UN Human Rights Council, 12th Special Session, 16 October 2009 - Debate on Goldstone Report
A balanced view.
Video (10"): Celebrated Iraq war veteran's view of the Gaza conflict
Newsnight (BBC)
19 January 2010
Celebrated Gulf War veteran Colonel Tim Collins travelled to Gaza for a soldier's view of the conflict.
New thread for this sub-topic:
Israel and the Gaza aid flotilla
Good spot from Wembley!
Angry Birds Peace Treaty - You Tube
A historic moment for birds and pigs everywhere. Taken from the Israeli comedy show 'Eretz Nehederet' ( A Wonderful Country).
Wait for the outraged headlines in the Guardian / Indie about the renewed plight of Palestinians in Gaza hospitals.
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Hamas and Fatah Take Their War to Hospitals
Hudson NY
January 21, 2011
Palestinian patients in the Gaza Strip have become the latest victims of the ongoing power struggle between the two Palestinian governments of Fatah and Hamas.
Until recently, the two governments used to blame Israel for the shortage of various types of medicine in the Gaza Strip: spokesmen for the Hamas and Fatah governments claimed that the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip was depriving the ill of many badly-needed medicines.
This week, the two rival Palestinian governments held each other -- not Israel -- responsible for the health crisis in the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian government in the West Bank, headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, announced that Hamas had been stealing or hiding most of the medicine that was sent to the Gaza Strip. Many Palestinians are believed to have died because of the lack of drugs and medical equipment.
According to the Fayyad government, Hamas militiamen have been confiscating shipments of medical supplies donated by the international communities and later offering the medical supplies for sale.
The medical supplies are sent first to the West Bank, where the Fayyad government is responsible for distributing them to Palestinians, including those living in the Gaza Strip.
Some Palestinians residents of the Gaza Strip and Western aid workers have confirmed the Fayyad government's allegations, saying that Hamas has indeed been confiscating most of the medical supplies that are sent from the West Bank – putting the lives of many patients at risk.
Hamas, for its part, has retorted by leveling similar charges against the Fayyad government. According to Hamas spokesmen, if anyone is to blame for the severe crisis in the Gaza Strip's hospitals and clinics it is the Fayyad government.
Hamas claims that the Fayyad government has been using the medicine to "blackmail" Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in a bid to undermine the Islamic movement's regime.
A spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip accused Fayyad and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of using medical supplies as a tool to fight Hamas and punish Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
more
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