Lebanon: not all Israelis are OK with ripping their neighbor to shreds

1. Israelis See Their Own Nation As "Neighborhood Bully" -- by Ira Chernus

You can see Lebanon from my sister’s backyard. She and her family and thousands of others in northern Israel live with a constant roar of gunfire -- mostly from Israeli cannons aiming to kill Lebanese, occasionally from a Hezbollah shell that might land on them.

But the real threat to Israel doesn’t come from Lebanese rockets. The real threat comes from the Israelis themselves -- and the rest of the world -- forgetting how and why this war started.

Israel does not go to war just to retrieve kidnapped soldiers. In the past, it has been ready to ransom them by returning Palestinian and Lebanese captives that it holds, just as the kidnappers ask. So why war now? For answers I’ve turned to Jewish writers in Israel’s top newspaper, Ha’aretz.

Last month the two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, agreed to form a united government and offer Israel a plan for permanent peace. A Ha’aretz columnist observed at the time that the peace offer “should have sparked a wave of positive reactions from Jerusalem … But Jerusalem's ear as usual is blocked to any sound that might advance the peace process.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert still insists on his unilateral “convergence” plan, which is merely “a plan to perpetuate the occupation, only under conditions more convenient for Israel. Moreover, at the end of the plan, if it is ever executed, even more settlers will live in the occupied territories than live there now.”

For the Israeli government, another Ha’aretz columnist wrote, “it is best that the Palestinians remain extremists because then no one will ask the government of Israel to negotiate with them. How do we ensure that the Palestinians remain radical? We simply strike at them, over and over.” So Israel responded to the Palestinian offer of negotiated peace with an allout assault on Gaza. That’s how and why it all began.

Now words from Jewish writers in Ha’aretz in the past week:

1. “The Israel Defense Forces once again looks like the neighborhood bully. … One and only one language is spoken by Israel, the language of force. The IDF absorbed two painful blows, which were particularly humiliating, and in their wake went into a war that is all about restoring its lost dignity.”

2. “The camouflage concealing the war's real goals was ripped off by this defense minister [Peretz], who says what he means: ‘[Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah is going to get it so bad that he will never forget the name Amir Peretz,’ he bragged, like a typical bully.”

3. “[Prime Minister] Olmert's cocktail of remarks has included threats -- ‘We'll grit our teeth and knock them silly,’ and ‘We'll have these Hamas leaders weeping and wailing. No one who messes with us is going to get off scot free.’"

4. “Lior Horev, Olmert's strategic adviser, says: ‘Such fundamental issues as self-image and standing in the international arena are critically challenged.’”

5. “Releasing prisoners will make us look like suckers.”

6. “Another generation of impassioned youngsters is growing up around us and screaming over the Internet: ‘Stick it to them.’ … On television there still will be the same generals, with the same conception, with the same short and limited range of strategic understanding, and they will win the same enthusiasm from the public that just wants to ‘stick it to them.’ This trigger finger thought in terms of ‘who will stick more to whom.’"

7. “While we're in no hurry to get to the negotiating table, we're eager to get to the battlefield and the killing without delay, without taking any time to think. That deepens suspicions that we need a war every few years, with terrifying repetition, even if afterward we end up back in exactly the same position.”

Why need a war every few years? Turn for a moment from Ha’aretz, often called the Hebrew equivalent of the New York Times, to the real New York Times, where Israeli novelist Etgar Keret pulled back the curtain. Among Israeli Jews, Keret wrote, after the attack on Lebanon began, “there was a small gleam in almost everyone’s eyes, a kind of unconscious breath of relief. … We long for a real war to take the place of all those exhausting years of intifada when there was no black or white, only gray … Once again, we’re a small country surrounded by enemies, fighting for our lives, not a strong, occupying country forced to fight daily against a civilian population. So is it any wonder that we’re all secretly just a tiny bit relieved?”

The idea of Israel as a tiny victim fighting for its life may be comforting for Israelis, but it is an illusion. My sister and her family are obviously scared, with good reason. Some Israelis have died, and every life is precious. But she goes to work every day as usual. It sounds like her biggest immediate problem is her dog, who trembles and whimpers at the continual sound of Israeli gunfire. “Massive wave of Katyushas strikes northern Israel; No injuries reported,” she reads in the latest Ha’aretz headline.

On the other side of the border, my brother-in-law writes, “most of the Shi'ite villages and towns that have been pounded are destroyed. … The Israelis have continually pounded the Shi'ite Dahia neighborhood [of Beirut], a Hezbollah stronghold, into rubble. The entire population, numbering perhaps up to two hundred thousand people were compelled to abandon their homes.” Well over 200 civilians have already died, and the Israeli Air Force talks about weeks more of the same.

The best writers in Ha’aretz know that some day Israel must give up its bullying, and that means giving up its illusions: the fiction that Israel is an innocent victim, merely responding to unprovoked aggression, and the vain hope that brutal force can restore an insecure bully’s wounded pride. As long as that lethal brew of illusion dominates Israel’s public mind and mood, Israeli bombs will keep on killing in Lebanon and Gaza, and the victims will fight back, endangering Israeli lives too.

Ha’aretz readers have been told the bottom line truth. The cause of this war -- and all of Israel’s problems -- is its refusal to negotiate an end to the occupation of Palestine.

1. “On the southern [Gaza] front we have continued waging a dubious war with no clear objective, wrapped up with intercessions and excuses that do not manage to hide our refusal to speak with the Palestinians.”

2. “There is no basic justice in adhering to occupied territory.”

3. “The siege on the Hamas government is not weakening it. On the contrary, it is boosting support for it.”

4. “Israel has no option in the long run other than withdrawing from the territories and from the occupation. … Israel's interest is for the Palestinians to live a life of plenty and well-being.”

5. But if this Israeli government “sinks into the destructive, meaningless routines that characterized its predecessors, the rest of the decade will turn into a disaster zone.”

(Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of the forthcoming book " Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin ." Email to: chernus@colorado.edu)


2. Knucklehead Diplomacy, Bush-Style -- by Ruth Conniff

News about Bush's foul language at the G-8 Summit got disproportionate coverage, of course. If you want to get the US press buzzing, get the President to swear, or fool around with an intern. Never mind the conflagration in Iraq. The more alarming part of the story was Bush's apparent boredom with the meeting of international leaders, his eagerness to go home, where he has "got something to do," and his apparent confusion about geography.

Here's the leader of the free world speaking to President Hu Jintao of China: "Where you going? Home? This is your neighborhood; it won't take you long to get home. . . . You get home in 8 hours? Me too! Russia is a big country, and you're a big country."

The era of cowboy diplomacy may be over, but we have two and a half more years of knucklehead diplomacy to go.

It would be funny if it weren't so terrifying. Remember, right after 9-11 when the big Republican talking point was "thank god the grown-ups are in charge?"

Doesn't have quite the same ring today.

But as terrorist violence and military reprisals worsen in Israel and Lebanon, and Americans feel less safe, a certain skepticism of the political motivations on all sides is some comfort.

Check out Al Jazeera and the poll question "Who do you think is mainly to blame for the current Middle East crisis?" Israel wins the race with 33% (no surprise, especially given the political leanings of Al Jazeera's readership). Hezbollah comes in second with 21%. Iran and Syria together get 19%, and the United States is tied with "all of the above" at 13%.

What's interesting is that 40% blame Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria, with a comparable 46% placing the blame on the usual fall guys, Israel and the United States.

On the flip side, Israelis are not all gung-ho for war. A moving column in Ha'aretz by journalist and Israeli Knesset member Yossi Sarid begs for a new, more measured approach: "Amid all the militant machismo, the voice of moderation must also be raised and heard, and it says now that force alone will simply not cut it. It is better for the ministers and officers to remember what Gaza did to us in the past 40 years and what Beirut did to us, and what Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia did and are doing to powerful America - and to calm down. It is best to arrive at the crucial meetings calm and sober-eyed."

There is no shortage of analysis of the regional politics behind the current crisis--Iran's shadow role, Hezbollah's intransigence, Israel's lack of restraint.

But despite Newsweek's alarming cover line: "Meltdown: what the widening war in the Middle East means for U.S. policy and the price of oil," it may be that there is no widening war.

The Bush Administration is, predictably, pursuing its one-sided policy of calling on Hezbollah and Hamas to make overtures for peace first--returning prisoners and ceasing violence. The more active policy preferred by Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general, to send a multinational force to the region, Bush called "odd." But even Tony Blair supports active international efforts to end the conflict.

Bush no longer has the poll numbers within the United States to sustain belligerent, nationalist posturing. A war-weary and terrorism-weary world is ready for better leadership.

(Ruth Conniff covers national politics for The Progressive and is a voice of The Progressive on many TV and radio programs.)


3. Meanwhile, in Iraq ... by William Rivers Pitt

Every network television news program, every cable news station, every newspaper and every news web site has been covering, and will continue to cover, the horrific mayhem unfolding between Israel and Lebanon. Anyone seeking information on that situation will not struggle to find it. In fact, it has become something of a challenge to stay abreast of the continuing carnage in Iraq.

We still have tens of thousands of soldiers there. Nineteen of them have died since the beginning of July, and 2,553 have died since the whole thing started. 150 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last three days, adding to the 6,000 civilians who have been killed in the last two months, adding to the tens of thousands who have been killed over the last three years.

So.

A few days ago, the UK Times published an article titled "Baghdad Starts to Collapse as Its People Flee a Life of Death." The author, James Hider, offered a glimpse of life within a civil war. "I returned to Baghdad on Monday after a break of several months," wrote Hider, "during which I too was guilty of glazing over every time I read another story of Iraqi violence. But two nights on the telephone, listening to my lost and frightened Iraqi staff facing death at any moment, persuaded me that Baghdad is now verging on total collapse.

"Ali phoned me on Tuesday night, about 10:30 p.m.," continued Hider. "There were cars full of gunmen prowling his mixed neighbourhood, he said. He and his neighbours were frantically exchanging information, trying to identify the gunmen. Were they the Mahdi Army, the Shia militia blamed for drilling holes in their victims' eyes and limbs before executing them by the dozen? Or were they Sunni insurgents hunting down Shias to avenge last Sunday's massacre, when Shia gunmen rampaged through an area called Jihad, pulling people from their cars and homes and shooting them in the streets?"

On the same day as Hider's article was published, Reuters came out with a similar report titled "Guns Galore as Anarchy Stalks Baghdad." The author, Miriam Karouny, describes a society that is arming itself to the teeth to try to avoid the daily massacres in the streets. "In Baghdad," reported Karouny, "it can seem everyone these days is armed, a mark of violence that is ever more anarchic and prompting efforts by the government, U.S. military, and even militia leaders, to curb rogue gunmen, especially among majority Shi'ites, who threaten what the prime minister has called the 'last chance' for peace. Some observers fear that a third, even more intractable, phase of the conflict has been reached, beyond insurgency and beyond even combat between organized armed groups: 'What we're now seeing has no shape whatever,' a Western diplomat said. 'It's just everyone fighting everyone. Anarchy.'"

On Tuesday, an armed gang presumed to be Sunnis attacked mourners at the funeral of a member of the Shiite militia called the Mahdi Army. Nine people were killed in the attack. The gunmen then drove to a marketplace south of Baghdad in the town of Mahmoudiya, killing three soldiers at a checkpoint along the way. At the marketplace, the gunmen attacked a crowd of civilians with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. More than 50 people were killed.

"The assault occurred a few hundred yards from Iraqi army and police positions," reported the New York Times, "but the troops did not intervene until the attackers were fleeing, the witnesses said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals."

Some other headlines from Tuesday:

KUNA: First Baghdad Bank Heist Nets 1.4 Billion: "Unknown militants dressed as Iraqi security forces robbed the Al-Rafidain Bank branch in Al-Amiriya, western Baghdad, Tuesday taking a 1.4 billion Iraqi dinars trophy."

Reuters: 3 Translators Killed in Haditha, 5 Policemen Killed in Hawija: "Gunmen killed three translators who worked for the U.S. forces in Haditha, 240 km (150 miles) northwest Baghdad, police said.... Five policeman were killed when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Hawija."

Reuters: Bomb Planted Beneath Corpse's Head Kills One: "Iraqi police found the head of a young woman near Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. A man was killed when a bomb planted under the head exploded as he was trying to take a photo of it."

Deutsche Presse-Agentur: Roadside Bomb Kills Nine Iraqis North of Baghdad: "A roadside bomb Tuesday killed nine Iraqis, including six policemen, at Howeija, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, a police source said. The bomb went off as a police patrol was passing through the town, south-west of Kirkuk."

National Public Radio: Deluge of Violence Overwhelms Baghdad: "A month after the Baghdad security plan went into effect, violence has escalated in the city. The capital's main morgue has been overwhelmed by the number of bodies brought in each day, and Iraqi security forces have been criticized for being part of the problem."

Lest we delude ourselves into thinking that death, destruction, violence, civil war and a benighted, crabwise slouch toward "democracy" in Iraq amounts to the main and central issue, we should encompass Tuesday's most important story. It came from Agence France-Presse.

US Wants New Iraq Oil Law So Foreign Firms Can Take Part: "The United States urged Iraq to adopt a new hydrocarbon law that would enable US and other foreign companies to invest in the war-torn country's oil sector."

So it goes.

(William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence)