If you're a critic of Israel, you're an anti-Semite, and other fall-out from the Lebanon bugger-up

1. Criticize Israel? You're an Anti-Semite! -- by Rosa Brooks

EVER WONDER what it's like to be a pariah?

Publish something sharply critical of Israeli government policies and you'll find out. If you're lucky, you'll merely discover that you've been uninvited to some dinner parties. If you're less lucky, you'll be the subject of an all-out attack by neoconservative pundits and accused of rabid anti-Semitism.

This, at least, is what happened to Ken Roth. Roth — whose father fled Nazi Germany — is executive director of Human Rights Watch, America's largest and most respected human rights organization. (Disclosure: I have worked in the past as a paid consultant for the group.) In July, after the Israeli offensive in Lebanon began, Human Rights Watch did the same thing it has done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Congo, Uganda and countless other conflict zones around the globe: It sent researchers to monitor the conflict and report on any abuses committed by either side.

It found plenty. On July 18, Human Rights Watch condemned Hezbollah rocket strikes on civilian areas within Israel, calling the strikes "serious violations of international humanitarian law and probable war crimes." So far, so good. You can't lose when you criticize a terrorist organization.

But Roth and Human Rights Watch didn't stop there. As the conflict's death toll spiraled — with most of the casualties Lebanese civilians — Human Rights Watch also criticized Israel for indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Roth noted that the Israeli military appeared to be "treating southern Lebanon as a free-fire zone," and he observed that the failure to take appropriate measures to distinguish between civilians and combatants constitutes a war crime.

The backlash was prompt. Roth and Human Rights Watch soon found themselves accused of unethical behavior, giving aid and comfort to terrorists and anti-Semitism. The conservative New York Sun attacked Roth (who is Jewish) for having a "clear pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel bias" and accused him of engaging in "the de-legitimization of Judaism, the basis of much anti-Semitism." Neocon commentator David Horowitz called Roth a "reflexive Israel-basher … who, in his zest to pillory Israel at every turn, is little more than an ally of the barbarians." The New Republic piled on, as did Alan Dershowitz, who claimed Human Rights Watch "cooks the books" to make Israel look bad. And writing in the Jewish Exponent, Jonathan Rosenblum accused Roth of resorting to a "slur about primitive Jewish bloodlust."

Anyone familiar with Human Rights Watch — or with Roth — knows this to be lunacy. Human Rights Watch is nonpartisan — it doesn't "take sides" in conflicts. And the notion that Roth is anti-Semitic verges on the insane.

But what's most troubling about the vitriol directed at Roth and his organization isn't that it's savage, unfounded and fantastical. What's most troubling is that it's typical. Typical, that is, of what anyone rash enough to criticize Israel can expect to encounter. In the United States today, it just isn't possible to have a civil debate about Israel, because any serious criticism of its policies is instantly countered with charges of anti-Semitism. Think Israel's tactics against Hezbollah were too heavy-handed, or that Israel hasn't always been wholly fair to the Palestinians, or that the United States should reconsider its unquestioning financial and military support for Israel? Shhh: Don't voice those sentiments unless you want to be called an anti-Semite — and probably a terrorist sympathizer to boot.

How did adopting a reflexively pro-Israel stance come to be a mandatory aspect of American Jewish identity? Skepticism — a willingness to ask tough questions, a refusal to embrace dogma — has always been central to the Jewish intellectual tradition. Ironically, this tradition remains alive in Israel, where respected public figures routinely criticize the government in far harsher terms than those used by Human Rights Watch.

In a climate in which good-faith criticism of Israel is automatically denounced as anti-Semitic, everyone loses. Israeli policies are a major source of discord in the Islamic world, and anger at Israel usually spills over into anger at the U.S., Israel's biggest backer.

With resentment of Israeli policies fueling terrorism and instability both in the Middle East and around the globe, it's past time for Americans to have a serious national debate about how to bring a just peace to the Middle East. But if criticism of Israel is out of bounds, that debate can't occur — and we'll all pay the price.

Back to Human Rights Watch's critics. Why waste time denouncing imaginary anti-Semitism when there's no shortage of the real thing? From politically motivated arrests of Jews in Iran to assaults on Jewish children in Ukraine, there's plenty of genuine anti-Semitism out there — and Human Rights Watch is usually taking the lead in condemning it. So if you're bothered by anti-Semitism — if you're bothered by ideologies that insist that some human lives have less value than others — you could do a whole lot worse than send a check to Human Rights Watch.


2. Their View of the World is Through a Bombsight
American support for Israel's unwinnable aim of destroying Hizbullah only boosts its support in Lebanon and beyond
By Noam Chomsky

In Lebanon, a little-honored truce remains in effect - yet another in a decades-long series of ceasefires between Israel and its adversaries in a cycle that, as if inevitably, returns to warfare, carnage and human misery. Let's describe the current crisis for what it is: a US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with only a cynical pretense to legitimacy. Amid all the charges and counter-charges, the most immediate factor behind the assault is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is hardly the first time that Israel has invaded Lebanon to eliminate an alleged threat. The most important of the US-backed Israeli invasions of Lebanon, in 1982, was widely described in Israel as a war for the West Bank. It was undertaken to end the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's annoying calls for a diplomatic settlement. Despite many different circumstances, the July invasion falls into the same pattern.

What would break the cycle? The basic outlines of a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict have been supported by a broad international consensus for 30 years: a two-state settlement on the international border, perhaps with minor and mutual adjustments.

The Arab states formally accepted this proposal in 2002, as the Palestinians had long before. Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that though this solution is not Hizbullah's preference, they will not disrupt it. Iran's "supreme leader" Ayatollah Khamenei recently reaffirmed that Iran too supports this settlement. Hamas has indicated clearly that it is prepared to negotiate for a settlement in these terms as well.

The US and Israel continue to block this political settlement, as they have done for 30 years, with brief and inconsequential exceptions. Denial may be preferred at home, but the victims do not enjoy that luxury.

US-Israeli rejectionism is not only in words but, more importantly, in actions. With decisive US backing, Israel has been formalizing its program of annexation, dismemberment of shrinking Palestinian territories and imprisonment of what remains by taking over the Jordan valley - the "convergence" program that is, astonishingly, called "courageous withdrawal" in the US.

In consequence, the Palestinians are facing national destruction. The most meaningful support for Palestine is from Hizbullah, which was formed in reaction to the 1982 invasion. It won considerable prestige by leading the effort to force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. Also, like other Islamic movements including Hamas, Hizbullah has gained popular support by providing social services to the poor.

To US and Israeli planners it therefore follows that Hizbullah must be severely weakened or destroyed, just as the PLO had to be evicted from Lebanon in 1982. But Hizbullah is so deeply embedded in society that it cannot be eradicated without destroying much of Lebanon as well. Hence the scale of the attack on the country's population and infrastructure.

In keeping with a familiar pattern, the aggression is sharply increasing the support for Hizbullah, not only in the Arab and Muslim worlds beyond, but also in Lebanon itself. Late last month, polls revealed that 87% of Lebanese support Hizbullah's resistance against the invasion, including 80% of Christians and Druze. Even the Maronite Catholic patriarch, the spiritual leader of the most pro-western sector in Lebanon, joined Sunni and Shia religious leaders in a statement condemning the "aggression" and hailing "the resistance, mainly led by Hizbullah". The poll also found that 90% of Lebanese regard the US as "complicit in Israel's war crimes against the Lebanese people".

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Lebanon's leading academic scholar on Hizbullah, observes that "these findings are all the more significant when compared to the results of a similar survey conducted just five months ago, which showed that only 58% of all Lebanese believed Hizbullah had the right to remain armed, and hence continue its resistance activity".

The dynamics are familiar. Rami Khouri, an editor of Lebanon's Daily Star, writes that "the Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel's persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect them and deliver essential services".

Such popular forces will only gain in power and become more extremist if the US and Israel persist in demolishing any hope of Palestinian national rights, and in destroying Lebanon.

Even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Washington's oldest ally in the region, was compelled to say: "If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."

It is no secret that Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hizbullah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terror. The latest adventure is likely to create new generations of bitter and angry jihadis, just as the invasion of Iraq did.

Israeli writer Uri Avnery observed that the Israeli chief of staff Dan Halutz, a former air force commander, "views the world below through a bombsight". Much the same is true of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and other top Bush administration planners. As history reveals, that view of the world is not uncommon among those who wield most of the means of violence.

Saad-Ghorayeb describes the current violence in "apocalyptic terms", warning that possibly "all hell would be let loose" if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which "the Shia community is seething with resentment at Israel, the US and the government that it perceives as its betrayer".

The core issue - the Israel-Palestine conflict - can be settled by diplomacy, if the US and Israel abandon their rejectionist commitments. Other outstanding problems in the region are also susceptible to negotiation and diplomacy. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even in "apocalyptic terms".

(Noam Chomsky's most recent book is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy ; he is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology www.chomsky.info)


3. A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and the Nation-State -- by Sharif Islam

Matti Bunzl 's work entitled "Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some Thoughts on the New Europe," published in American Ethnologist (Vol. 32, No. 4, November 2005), is groundbreaking. It is evident from the article, as well as the commentaries on it that appeared in the same issue, that, to understand contemporary Europe, we need to rethink some of our assumptions about it and grasp the changing landscape of the rest of the world.

The common method of comparing anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, especially among leftists, is to analogize them and to see both as the "Other" of Christianity. Bunzl argues against that method, given the decisive secularization of Europe. He, instead, draws an analytical framework that situates these two in different projects of exclusion. According to Bunzl, anti-Semitism was invented in the late 19th century to police the ethnically pure nation-state. On the other hand, Islamophobia is a recent formation that seeks to make the supranational European Union a fortress against migrants. He goes further: traditional anti-Semitism has run its historical course with the end of the nation-state, and, consequently, Islamophobia is becoming the defining condition of the "new Europe."

Bunzl discusses two views on anti-Semitism that are dominant in Europe. The alarmist view, often found on the right side of the political spectrum, sees a resurgence of anti-Semitism as an immediate threat to the worldwide Jewish community. For them, anti-Zionism is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism: any critique of the Jewish state carries "potential residues" of anti-Semitism. The other view, on the left, rejects the idea that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic. The left view points to the relatively small number of acts of violence against Jews and the degree of comfort Jews enjoy in the continent. Even though those who hold the latter view do recognize that Jewish institutions and communities have increasingly become victims of abuse, they tend to see those cases as part of the larger patterns of racist violence against all minorities initiated by the extreme right.

Bunzl asserts that both alarmists and leftists are wrong. Europe is not a hotbed of unbridled anti-Semitism. Nor can all anti-Semitic incidents be categorized under right-wing violence. He claims that both sides rely on static views of history: the former sees anti-Semitism as a constant and the latter, the right-wing ideology. Bunzl cites examples from Austria, among others, to illustrate historical change. In the period before WW II, there were three political factions that resorted to anti-Semitism: a) German national parties, which sought the exclusion of Jews on racial grounds; b) Christian factions, which fought the Jewish presence out of a mixture of religious anti-Judaism and reactionary anti-modernism; and c) even socialists and communists who regularly deployed anti-Semitism in their critiques of capitalism, even though many of their leaders were Jews. He argues that Austria today is still dominated by these three factions but anti-Semitism is nevertheless fading. Under of leadership of Jörg Haider, the Freedom Party opposed Austria's membership in the EU on nationalist grounds. However, in 1995, after Austria's inclusion in the EU, the politics of the party changed. The party began to accept Jews as potential leaders. According to Bunzl, this change is common among Europe's far right-wing movements. He contrasts it with the dynamics of Islamophobia. He argues that Islamophobia is a genuine political issue, part of a wide-open debate on the future of Muslim presence in Europe. In contrast, there is no debate on the legitimacy of Jewish presence in Europe.

Bunzl recognizes some validity of the analogy between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: "Both, after all, are exclusionary ideologies mobilized in the interest of collective engineering." But similarities end there. Anti-Semitism was designed to protect the purity of the ethnic nation-state, whereas Islamophobia is a project to "safeguard the future of European civilization."

Even though Bunzl's concern about growing anti-Islamic attitudes throughout Europe provides substantial insights, critics of his article raise some important issues. One commentator on the article, John Bowen , takes issue with the neutrality of the term "Islamophobia": the term is more polemical than analytical. Bowen claims that anti-Arab racism is hard to distinguish from fear of Islam and both are mixed up with racism against Black Africans in the minds of many. He also thinks that Bunzl's portrayal of Islamophobia as a recent phenomenon is not well grounded, reminding the reader, for instance, of French attitudes toward Muslims that stemmed from the colonization of Algeria and the Algerian War. At the end of the commentary, Bowen asks whether or not limiting Europe to a set of nations with a shared heritage, e.g., excluding Turkey from the EU, is necessarily anti-Islamic. He doesn't answer the question, nor does he argue for the exclusion of Turkey himself, but he asserts that a person who makes such a statement is not "ipso facto" an Islamophobe.

Nina Glick Schiller , another commentator, argues that Bunzl portrays contemporary Europe and its Islamophobia in such a way that makes it difficult to understand the global context in which they exist. She shows that Bunzl disregards the current global movement to revive a Christian identity, though she admits it is still marginal in countries like Germany. According to her, such a global movement, which seeks to merge intersecting identities of "Christian" and "European" as well as racialized national identities in Europe, must be understood within the context of worldwide neoliberal reforms that have caused a generalized sense of insecurity. "What is happening at the level of localities, nation-states and Europe as a whole cannot be separated from the global economy and its political fault lines. To talk about Europe and Islamophobia without talking about more global forces is to miss the triangulation and contention of U.S. and European interests over sources of oil in the Middle East, Africa, and central Asia," she argues.

Glick Schiller's criticism of the gaps in Bunzl's article draws upon her analysis of various nation-state building projects and comparative fieldworks in small cities in eastern Germany and in the New England region of the United States. Based on her research on the "born-again" movement, she found that there is a strong networking of evangelical Christian bases among nation-states. Their usage of websites, common texts, and traveling preachers has allowed the movement to successfully reach the height of political power in the United States. She points out that, in USA, the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Christian crusade runs rampant. Even though the number of people who espouse this form of Christianity is still small in Europe today, it is growing. She points out that "Christianity was not vanquished as a category of identity by the growth of nation-states but came hand in hand with the penetration of capitalism, modernity, and nationalism. And that heritage has not been abandoned in the core states of the European Union or in its newest members. Most people in Europe may not be very religious, but enough of constituency equates civilization, Europe, and Christianity that the issue of acknowledging Christianity within the E.U. constitution was hotly debated rather than readily dismissed as an outdated and discredited idea." She emphasizes the anti-Islamic rhetoric that is growing in force in Europe is simultaneously a discourse about religion and a racialized discourse about culture. Bunzl's insistence on the end of nationalism prevents him from noting that, by constructing the Other, people in each European state also display their nationalism.

This entire issue of American Ethnologist , a major anthropology journal published by the American Anthropological Association, in which the above articles appeared raised some important questions about contemporary Europe. As described by Virginia Dominguez in the issue's foreword , these articles are all about "exclusionary projects." The contributors deal with how such projects work, how they are sustained, and under what conditions they become more visible. Bunzl's article examines anti-Semitism and Islamophobia through the lens that focuses on their respective relations to contemporary supranationalism in Europe. The commentaries on his work point out the need to connect his analysis with the dynamic global landscape. I only discussed three articles from this issue, but the rest of the articles are also intriguing and definitely worth debating. Juxtaposing these discussions not only with exclusionary European projects but with other exclusionary ideologies from rest of the world should prove illuminating.

References:
Bowen, John. "Commentary on Bunzl." American Ethnologist 32.4 (2005): 524-525.
Bunzl, Matti. "Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some Thoughts on the New Europe." American Ethnologist 32.4 (2005): 499-508.
Glick Schiller, Nina (2005). "Racialized Nations, Evangelizing Christianity, Police States, and Imperial Power: Missing in Action in Bunzl's New Europe." American Ethnologist 32.4 (2005): 526-532.

(Sharif Islam is a Research Programmer at the University of Illinois Library Systems Office. Read his blog: Khepa Baul.)


4. Deception as a Way of Life
Israeli Myths
By JONATHAN COOK
Nazareth

In a state established on a founding myth -- that the native Palestinian population left of their own accord rather than that they were ethnically cleansed -- and in one that seeks its legitimacy through a host of other lies, such as that the occupation of the West Bank is benign and that Gaza's has ended, deception becomes a political way of life.

And so it is in the "relative calm" that has followed Israel's month-long pounding of Lebanon, a calm in which Israelis may no longer be dying but the Lebanese most assuredly are as explosions of US-made cluster bombs greet the south's returning refugees and the anonymous residents of Gaza perish by the dozens each and every week under the relentless and indiscriminate strikes of the Israeli air force while the rest slowly starve in their open-air prison.

Israeli leaders deceive as much in "peace" as they do in war, which is why it is worth examining the slow trickle of disinformation coming from Tel Aviv and reflecting on where it is leading.

Many of Israel's war lies have already been deeply implanted in Western consciousness by the media:

* that Hizbullah "started" the war by capturing two Israeli soldiers rather than that Israel maintained a hostile and provocative posture for the previous six years by daily sending its warplanes and spy drones into Lebanese airspace;

* that Hizbullah's launching of rockets into Israel was an act of aggression, even though they were fired after, and in response to, Israel's massive bombing of civilian areas in Lebanon;

* that Hizbullah, unlike Israel, used the local civilian populaton as human shields, even though Israel's continual and comprehensive aerial spying on south Lebanon produced almost no evidence of this;

* that Hizbullah, not Israel, targeted civilians, despite a death toll that suggests the exact opposite;

* and that Hizbullah's arming by Iran is entirely illegitimate, even though the weapons were used to defend Lebanon from a long-prepared Israeli attack, while Israel has an absolute and unchallengeable right to receive its arsenal from the US, even though those armaments have been used offensively, mostly against Lebanese and Palestinian civilian populations.

Similar deceptions are now being sown after the fighting.

For example, it now appears to be accepted wisdom that Hizbullah's rocket attacks on Israel led to one million Israelis being made refugees. The most senior commentator with Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Yoel Marcus, made exactly this point the other day in an op-ed in Britain's Guardian newspaper, when he observed that "about a million Israeli refugees" had been forced to leave the north. Marcus appears to take an extremely liberal view of the meaning of the word "about".

In fact, it is impossible that one million Israelis could have been made refugees, as a quick calculation proves. There are approximately 1.2 million Israelis living in the north, with the population divided equally between Jewish and Arab citizens. Hardly any Arabs left the north during the Hizbullah rocket attacks, either through a residual fear that their homes might be taken by the state, as were those of Palestinians who fled or were terrorised away during the 1948 war, or because they had nowhere else to go. Most assumed, probably rightly, that the Jewish population in the country's centre would not welcome them as refugees.

It is also reported that 300,000 Israelis sought sanctuary in bomb shelters. Such shelters were open only in the north, and do not exist in the country's Arab areas, so those using the shelters must have been the north's Jewish citizens. Which means that if 300,000 of the 600,000 Jews in northern Israel were in shelters, there can have been at most -- assuming all other Israeli Jews fled -- 300,000 refugees.

Why does Marcus want us to believe that one million Israelis were turned out their homes? Because it helps Israel portray the threat posed by Hizbullah in a more terrifying light and because it makes more convincing the claim that Israelis suffered as much as the Lebanese, one million of whom really did end up as refugees.

It also conveniently glosses over the fact that most of the 300,000 (or fewer) Israeli "refugees" were staying with relatives or friends 100km or so further south in spare rooms and out of harm's way. They were not, as were the Lebanese, fleeing for their lives -- their convoys under fire from warplanes -- and living in the open air without shelter, food or water and still within range of missile attacks.

Outside of Kiryat Shmona, close to the border with Lebanon, almost all of Israel's "refugees" returned to untouched homes, whereas tens of thousands of Lebanon's refugees have found their houses turned to rubble, and amid that rubble cluster bombs that threaten to kill and maim them.

But again, that is not what the Israeli government wants us to believe, which is why it published a report this week claiming that 12,000 buildings had been damaged by Hizbullah rocket attacks. That seems a strangely large figure given that the Israeli army says only 4,000 rockets were fired into Israel and that a substantial proportion supposedly landed in open ground. The same report also says more than 400 bush fires were started by the rockets.

So how and why did the government reach the figure of 12,000 buildings? That would mean that each rocket that hit a structure damaged at least another three buildings. Anyone who has seen the destruction inflicted by a Katyusha rocket (Hizbullah's main weapon) will known that it does little more than punch a hole in whatever surface it hits. The spray of shrapnel, however, does minor damage to neighbouring structures (though much worse harm to human beings), such as piercing the rendering on homes or breaking windows. In other words, most of those 12,000 "structures" -- and of course none of us can know what Israeli officials are including as a structure (individual apartments, garages, dog kennels?) -- suffered minor damage that can be fixed in an afternoon.

So why the need to promote that inflated number? Because Hizbullah is reporting that 15,000 buildings were destroyed: that is, wrecked beyond repair by Israel's missile attacks. As is the tradition in Arab society, many of those several-storey buildings were home to multiple families, meaning that probably many more "homes" than 15,000 have been destroyed. Some Lebanese sources estimate that more than 100,000 homes have been ruined. But for Israel the goal is to make it look as though its own people's suffering is the same as that of the Lebanese.

Interestingly, the estimates of economic damage inflicted on Lebanon by Israel's onslaught stand at about $5 billion, a figure which again Israel says neatly fits with its own assessments of its losses. It seems that each time one of those American-supplied munitions was dropped it did as much harm to Israel's defence budget as it did to the place where it exploded. The point presumably is that, if and when the reparations account is being settled, Israel will claim its own losses cancel out those of Lebanon's.

Many of Israel's deceptions are also being used domestically to determine who will benefit -- and who will be excluded -- from the government's largesse as it plans the north's "reconstruction". No suprises about which way the wind is blowing.

Government ministers, for example, have been claiming in the war's aftermath that Arab -- not Jewish -- municipal leaders fled from their communities to avoid the rocket fire. For example, after a tour of the north, the interior minister, Ronnie Bar-On, argued that the failings in some towns and villages to cope with the war stemmed from the fact that local leaders "ran away, at the highest levels". Asked to name the mayors and local councillors who had fled, Bar-On would only say: "Those people I am referring to I can say that in their towns I saw no synagogues."

Why make this claim, even though all the evidence suggests that the Arab populations of the north stayed put during the fighting while, as we have seen, a large number of Jewish citizens did flee? There are two reasons.

First, the government has been embarrassed by reports that nearly half of the civilians killed by rockets were Arab, and by suggestions that the reasons for this were the state's long-standing failure to protect Arab communities by building public bomb shelters, providing air raid sirens and disseminating advice from the civil defence authorities in Arabic. Better to shift the blame on to their elected leaders.

And second, the government is amassing huge sums of money for the reconstruction effort from Jewish groups in America and Europe and is looking for an excuse not to fund work in Arab communities. Another senior politician, Effi Eitam, leader of the National Religious Party, has accused Arab authorities of "pretending to be deprived". The north's Arabs will most likely be cut out of tasting the reconstruction pie. Certainly there is no discussion of building public bomb shelters for Arab towns, even though few in Israel appear to believe the ceasefire with Hizbullah will hold long.

Similarly, the environment minister Gideon Ezra has stated that Arab communities in the north should not receive money to rehabilitate their separate and grossly deprived education system, on the grounds that during the war "the residents there behaved as per usual, as if nothing had happened" -- a reference that sounds like they are being penalised because they did not flee. His reasoning appears popular, among the public and in the cabinet, because Arab citizens generally opposed Israel's war.

A related deception being promoted by the government is that it is committed to compensating workers and businesses in the north who lost income during the war. But the list drawn up by the finance ministry of areas eligible for compensation reveals that all Arab communities have been excluded, apart from four Druze villages (the Druze serve in the army and are treated by Israel as a national group separate from the rest of the Arab population). Most of the money, millions of dollars, is being made available only to Jewish citizens, even though Arab citizens comprise half the population of the north. What a contrast to Hizbullah's non-discriminatory policy of compensating all Lebanese harmed by the fighting, whether from its own Shia community or Christian, Druze and Sunni Muslims.

(Incidentally, according to Haaretz, in one court case being brought by an Arab engineer from the village of Fassouta who, unlike his Jewish colleagues, is being denied compensation for loss of income during the war, it is noted that he could not leave his home because the Israeli army was firing artillery batteries stationed on the edge of the village. So much for Israel's argument, adopted by the United Nation's representative Jan Egeland, that only Hizbullah was using civilians as human shields!)

Israel's post-war deceptions, of course, embrace the Palestinians living under occupation too. Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet secret service, is claiming that, inspired by the success of Hizbullah, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are turning Rafah into "the garden of Eden of weapons smuggling". Apparently Israel knows about 15,000 guns, 4 million bullets, 38 rockets, 10-15 Katyusha rockets, and dozens of anti-tank missiles that have entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing in the past year. Israel believes that just about everything bar tanks and planes is coming across the short border with Egypt it still controls. In a few years, says Diskin, Israel will face the same situation in Gaza as in south Lebanon. We will just have to take his word for that.

But there is a problem. Since November 2005, say human rights groups, the Rafah crossing has been almost continuously shut. Those weapons must have been smuggled in a stampede on the day or two when the crossing was open.

Further doubt is cast on Diskin's claims by a report in Haaretz this week that the blanket closure of Rafah crossing has continued since one of Israel's soldiers was captured by Palestinian fighters two months ago. The reason for the crossing's closure, recommended by Shin Bet, is also noted by Haaretz -- and it has nothing to do with weapons smuggling. The blockade was imposed as a way to put pressure on the Palestinians to release the Israeli soldier, a form of collective punishment illegal under international law.

Diskin's comparisons between developments in Gaza and south Lebanon are at best fanciful. How Gaza's resistance fighters will be able to build hundreds of underground bunkers in the Strip's flat, sandy terrain unknown to Israel as its planes and tanks freely roam the area, and as Military Intelligence operates its network of collaborators, is not explained. But Diskin's conclusions presumably will be used to justify Israel's continuing assaults on Gaza's civilian population. Better, the argument will go, not to wait to be caught out as in Lebanon.

The biggest deception of all, however, relates to the reasons for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision this week to reject the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry, headed by a judge, that would have been free to investigate all aspects of the war. Instead Olmert has set up two separate internal committees of investigation, one to examine government decision-making and the other the army's conduct. (A third watchdog body, under the government's state comptroller, is supposed to look at failings in civil defence.)

Most Israelis are deeply unhappy about what one commentator has called Olmert's "committee of non-inquiry". Separate investigations mean that the remit of each committee will be very narrow, focusing on technical issues and failings, and unable to look at the wider picture.

The members of the committee who will be investigating Olmert have been handpicked by him. All the judges approached to head the committee turned down the offer, as did the country's foremost constitutional law expert, Amnon Rubinstein, apparently aware that being party to a whitewash would permanently tarnish his reputation.

It will now be led by a former head of Mossad, Israel's international spy agency. Observers have speculated that 77-year-old Nahum Admoni's room for criticising the government will be extremely limited, given that he himself was admonished by the Kahan Commission of Inquiry that in 1982 investigated Israel's role in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. Admoni failed to give "an unequivocal warning about the danger entailed in the Phalangists' entry into the camps" that resulted in the slaughter of more than 1,000 Palestinians. Mossad was keenly involved with the Christian Phalangists, attempting to install them in power as a puppet regime.

Kahan took no action against Admoni, however, because he -- like Olmert now -- had only recently taken up his job. It will be hard for Admoni to treat Olmert more harshly than Kahan treated him two decades ago.

Why would Olmert want a discredited committee rather than a proper commission of inquiry, especially if, as he claims, the reason against the latter is that it will take years to report? By then, he may be out of office and never have to face the fall-out. The official reason, according to Olmert, is that such a delay would paralyse the army. But most commissions of inquiry have produced interim reports, making recommendations for reforms, within a few months and have then taken their time to produce a final report.

Other factors are at play, relating to the past and the future. The obvious one is that a powerful commission would almost certainly investigate the six-year build-up to the war following Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon. There is a real danger that its investigations might throw an uncomfortable light on Israel's motives for continuing provocative overflights by its war planes in Lebanon; on its refusal to hand over the maps of the minefields it planted in south Lebanon during its two decades of occupation; on its refusal to release the last remaining Lebanese prisoners in its jails, thereby perpetuating a state of hostilities; and its refusal to negotiate with Lebanon and Syria about an end to its occupation of the Golan Heights and with it a resolution of the disputed status of the corridor of land known as the Shebaa Farms, which Lebanon claims.

But there is an even bigger threat posed by the establishment of a commission. It might unearth evidence that the war against Lebanon was long planned, that it had nothing to do with the capture of two soldiers on the border, that it was coordinated with the United States, and that its ultimate goal was an attack on Iran.

Olmert, and Israel's political and military leaders, do not need another Kahan Commission -- or another embarrassment like its findings about Israel's involvement with the Sabra and Shatilla massacre. Israel needs a free hand to strike unchallenged when the next stage of the war on terror takes shape. Olmert admitted as much in his coded observation that a commission of inquiry would distract from the central goal: "to focus on the future and the Iranian threat".

A clue where Israel might be heading next emerged this week when Olmert's trusted international ambassador, Shimon Peres, "revealed" that Iran is trying to transfer its nuclear know-how to terrorist organisations. Peres did not name Hizbullah but it is only time before the link is made and a new casus belli established.

(Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net)


5. Who Started It?
Chronology of the Latest Crisis in the Middle East
By SHARAT G. LIN

The Bush administration, Congress, and the press repeatedly echo the Israeli government’s position that the current warfare between Israel versus Palestinians and Lebanese is a consequence of the “kidnapping” of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit by Hamas-led militants on June 25, 2006 and the “abduction” of two more Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah on July 12, 2006. Yet every hostile action in this part of the Middle East is seen by someone as a response to a prior action by the other side. The only logical starting point for objectively examining the sequence of causes and effects is to begin with a watershed event that was clearly independent of any preceding military or political provocation. In 2006 that event was the Palestinian elections of January 25.

A careful examination of the sequence of events reveals that every significant military action by a Palestinian or Lebanese militia was clearly in response to desperate conditions imposed on Palestinians by Israel. While one may not condone many of these actions because they result in the loss of life, they must be understood in the context of the entire crisis in this part of the Middle East and the living conditions of Palestinians, many of whom have been exiled from their ancestral homes since the U.N. partition of Palestine in 1948.

Chronology of Crisis

The following chronology of major events was compiled from Associated Press, New York Times, Financial Times, The Observer, and other established news agencies.

January 20, 2005

Facing mounting criticism of his conduct of the war in Iraq and “the war on terror”, President George W. Bush at his second inaugural address tries to give a positive face to his administration by adding “promotion of democracy” as new cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. He says, “So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” An outcome of this policy was the encouragement given to Hamas to participate in future Palestinian elections.

mid-January 2006

Public-opinion polls in Palestine continue to suggest that Fatah will win the most seats in the elections for the Palestinian parliament. The polls indicate that Hamas could win more than one-third of the seats.

January 25, 2006

Israel seals off Gaza by closing the Erez border crossing into Gaza in anticipation of security concerns leading up to Palestinian elections. Karni crossing was closed on January 15, 2006, and three other commercial crossings have been opened only intermittently. The impoverished Gaza Strip is critically dependent on imports of food, fuel, medicines, and other essential commodities brought in through Israeli-controlled border crossings. Gaza residents were equally dependent on the border crossings to get to their jobs in Israel before that avenue of employment was cut off by Israeli authorities.

(The entire Gaza Strip is surrounded by concrete walls and high fencing. Israel controls all access into and out of Gaza, including the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Palestinian access to the sea is strictly controlled by the Israeli navy. Palestinian air traffic is banned.)

Palestinians go to the polls to elect a new parliament – the Palestinian Legislative Council.

January 26

The preliminary election results are announced. Hamas wins 76 of the 132 seats, an absolute majority. Fatah wins only 43. International observers declare the elections to be free and fair. The later final tally will be 74 seats for Hamas.

February 12

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC, says that democracy should no longer be an immediate goal of U.S. foreign policy. Other think tanks, such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, follow suit later in the month by attacking the administration’s commitment to promoting elections.

February 13

Israeli officials and Western diplomats reveal that Israel and the United States are discussing ways to destabilize the newly-elected Palestinian government. The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority (PA) of money and international connections until President Mahmoud Abbas is compelled to call a new election.

February 18

The new Palestinian parliament is sworn in by President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. With many Palestinian legislators in Gaza banned by Israel from travelling to the West Bank, they have to settle for participating via a video link.

February 19

Israel cuts off approximately $50 million in monthly customs and tax revenues that it collects for the Palestinian Authority. The money is essential to pay the salaries of 160,000 Palestinian government employees, including 58,000 police and security personnel.

The U.S. government backs Israel by announcing that it too is likely to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority until the new Hamas government recognizes Israel and disarms its commandos.

March 5

Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, is sworn in as prime minister to head the next government. Branding it a “terrorist authority”, both the U.S. and Israeli governments refuse to constructively engage a new Palestinian government jointly led by a Fatah president and a Hamas-led cabinet.

March 10

U.S. officials pressure independent “moderate” politicians not to serve in a Hamas-led government. The Bush administration’s strategy is to force Hamas to govern alone, hoping to isolate it politically when its government eventually fails under the cut-off of tax revenues and western aid.

March 14

When British prison monitors were suddenly ordered to leave their posts supervising six high-profile Palestinian detainees in Jericho, Israel besieged the prison compound with tanks, taking the six detainees into their custody. One of those seized was Ahmed Sa’adat of the secular left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who had won a seat in the Palestinian election in January. It is widely believed that the sudden withdrawal of the British prison monitors was calculated to give Israeli forces a pretext to seize the detainees by force from PA custody. The coordinated British and Israeli actions sparked widespread outrage throughout Palestine.

March 19

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh proposes a 24-member cabinet made of Hamas members, Fatah members and independents having been deterred from joining by U.S. pressure.

With the nearly 1.4 million Gaza residents facing severe shortages of bread, milk, and other essential commodities, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators reach a tentative agreement to open one border crossing into Gaza near kibbutz Kerem Shalom to allow humanitarian aid to enter the densely-populated Palestinian enclave from Egypt.

April 7

The U.S. and EU formally cut off all direct aid to the Hamas-led government, demanding that Hamas recognize Israel, honor previous PA agreements, and disarm its commandos. They say that they will redirect some aid to humanitarian projects that bypass the PA. The U.S. decision affects $411 million previously earmarked for the PA to maintain services in the impoverished Palestinian territories, and about $100 million to be redirected to food and medicines delivered through international agencies.

May 7

The PA defaults on two months of salary payments for its 160,000 government employees.

As the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the West Bank continues to deteriorate, the U.S. and EU search for ways to resume international aid while bypassing Hamas. They consider channelling aid through the office of President Mahmoud Abbas in cooperation with the World Bank, IMF, and United Nations.

May 18

Starved of income, facing daily food shortages, and virtually imprisoned within the boundaries of Gaza, residents are becoming desperate for a resolution of the impasse. Amid rising unrest, competing Hamas and Fatah forces attempt to assert their presences by parading around with arms. In the following weeks, Hamas and Fatah militias engage in intermittent shootouts, some bloody.

May 29

Israeli ground troops enter Gaza for the first time since withdrawing eight months ago. They kill four Palestinians, including a policeman.

June 5

President Mahmoud Abbas announces a referendum scheduled for July 26th on a plan that would implicitly recognize Israel. Hamas opposes the referendum.

June 7

After negotiations between Hamas and Fatah aimed at halting weeks of bloody infighting, the Hamas-led government agrees to withdraw controversial private militias from public spaces in Gaza.

June 8

A midnight Israeli missile attack in southern Gaza kills four Palestinian members of the Popular Resistance Committees, including Jamal Abu Samhadana, who had recently been appointed to be inspector general in the Interior Ministry. Israel has blamed Samhadana for attacking a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Gaza in 2003, although his group has denied involvement.

June 9

In response to Israeli missile attacks, Palestinian militants fire small crude Qassam rockets into Israel towards Ashkelon, but no Israelis are hurt.

Israeli artillery shelling, ostensibly aimed at Qassam rocket launch sites, kills 7 civilians on a northern Gaza beach, including a Palestinian family having a picnic with their 3 small children. Israel claims it was an accident. Other Israeli rocket attacks kill another 9 Palestinians, and injure at least 30 in Gaza.

In response, the Hamas government vows to end its official 16-month ceasefire with Israel.

June 10

Hamas forces fire at least 15 Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel.

June 11

An Israeli air strike kills two Hamas commandos in Gaza. Palestinians respond with more Qassam rockets.

June 12

Palestinian security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas open fire with small arms on the parliament building and cabinet offices in Ramallah before setting the buildings on fire. The action is a retaliation for an attack by Hamas commandos in Gaza.

June 14

Angry Palestinian government employees, who have not been paid for months, storm their parliament in Ramallah, demanding back pay.

A bit of temporary relief comes when the Palestinian foreign minister, Mahmoud Zahar, returns to Gaza carrying $20 million in cash euros after a trip seeking emergency funds from foreign governments.

Fatah and Hamas reach an agreement to integrate a 3,000-man militia formed by the Hamas-controlled interior ministry into the Fatah-dominated national police.

June 15

Palestinians fire Qassam rockets into the Israeli town of Sederot.

Hamas announces its willingness to reinstate the 16-month ceasefire if Israel will stop all attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. Israel refuses, demanding that the Palestinian rocket attacks stop first.

June 21

At least a dozen more Palestinian civilians are killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza over an 8-day period.

June 25

Palestinian commandos kill two Israeli soldiers and capture Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit after tunnelling 300 yards into Israel from Gaza. Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees, and the Army of Islam participate in the raid south of kibbutz Kerem Shalom, just north of the Egyptian border.

Shalit is the first Israeli soldier captured by Palestinians since 1994. Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, publicly urges the captors to “protect his life and treat him well.”

Israel closes all border crossings into Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert holds the PA fully responsible.

June 26

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warns of military action.

Palestinian captors demand that Israel release all 95 Palestinian women and 313 youths under age 18 held in Israeli prisons in exchange for the release of Corporal Shalit. A total of over 9,500 Palestinians (excluding those who are Israeli citizens) are known to be held in Israeli prisons.

June 27

Fatah and Hamas are compelled into unity in the face of looming full-scale war. They adopt a common political platform that includes an implicit recognition of the state of Israel by Hamas. The so-called Prisoners Document calls for the creation of a Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders, alongside Israel, and asserts the right of Palestinian refugees to return to lands within Israel proper.

Israeli troops and armor move in force into southern Gaza.

June 28

The Popular Resistance Committees kill one Israeli settler near Ramallah.

June 29

Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers roll into northern Gaza. Israeli aircraft bomb three bridges at Deir al-Balah and the former settlement of Netzarim. They also destroy Gaza’s sole power station that supplies half of Gaza’s electricity. Israel begins shelling Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in Gaza. Israeli missiles target the Islamic University in Gaza City.

Israel arrests Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer, one-third of the Palestinian cabinet, including Labor Minister Mohammed Barghouti and Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razak, and 20 Palestinian legislators in Ramallah, Jenin, East Jerusalem, and other parts of the West Bank. President Mahmoud Abbas appeals to the United Nations for help in obtaining their release. In all, 87 Palestinians are detained in the West Bank.

PA government leaders join in the demand that Israel release all women and children prisoners in exchange for Corporal Shalit.

Israeli Justice Minister, Haim Ramon, suggests that the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshal, exiled in Syria, is a target for assassination. Other Israeli officials suggest that Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh could also be seized in Gaza, or even assassinated if Corporal Shalit is not returned.

June 30

Israeli warplanes strike the Palestinian Interior Ministry building, setting it on fire. Meanwhile, Israeli aircraft and artillery continue to shower southern Gaza.

July 2

Under mounting pressure from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and international aid agencies concerned about the looming humanitarian situation in Gaza, Israel temporarily opened the border crossings at Karni and Kerem Shalom to allow trucks carrying food, fuel, and medical supplies to enter Gaza after being sealed for a week.

July 3

After Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that he intended to make the lives of Gaza residents ever more miserable until Corporal Shalit is returned, Israeli forces intensified their attacks on Gaza. Israeli aircraft bomb Gaza City, hitting the local Fatah party office and the offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

July 6

With Israel escalating its rocket attacks and advancing into densely-populated areas of Gaza, 16 Palestinians are killed. One Israeli soldier also dies.

July 7

The European Union, issuing its strongest criticism yet, states; “The EU condemns the loss of lives caused by disproportionate use of force by the Israeli Defence Forces and the humanitarian crisis it has aggravated.”

Facing mounting international criticism for its invasion of Gaza, Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter indicates for the first time that Israel might be willing to free Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Corporal Shalit.

July 8

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh calls for a ceasefire to halt the Israeli offensive in Gaza. Israel rejects the Palestinian offer, demanding that Palestinians first return the captured Israeli soldier and halt rocket attacks into southern Israel.

July 9

The Palestinian death toll due to Israel’s Gaza offensive surpasses 50.

July 12

Responding to the mounting carnage in Gaza, and the Israeli seizure of much of the Palestinian government leadership, the Lebanese Hezbollah militia engages in border skirmishes with Israeli troops. In the ensuing battle, Hezbollah forces kill 3 Israeli soldiers and capture two. With Israeli forces in hot pursuit into Lebanon, another 5 Israeli soldiers die. Hezbollah casualties were not immediately announced.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responds by saying, “Lebanon is responsible and Lebanon will bear the consequences of its actions.”

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora calls for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council, appealing for help in preventing the impending Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

July 13

Israel responds with military assaults from the air, land, and sea into southern Lebanon. Its combat operations in southern Lebanon are the first since withdrawing in 2000. Israel launches a aerial bombardment of Beirut International Airport, the surrounding southern suburbs where Hezbollah operates, and the main highway connecting Beirut with Damascus.

Residents of Beirut stream out of the city desperately seeking refuge in the mountains or towards Syria. With the Israeli naval blockade and the country’s only international airport inoperable, nearly all normal means out of the country are blocked.

Hezbollah fires scores of Katyusha rockets into Israel, most falling around the beach town of Nahariya. A single larger missile hits Haifa, some 20 miles south of the Lebanese border, much farther than any previous Hezbollah rocket attacks. Hezbollah rockets also strike Raifa.

President George W. Bush unconditionally defends the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, and goes on to assert that Syria be “held to account” for fostering “terrorism”. He refuses to join international calls for a prompt ceasefire. Meanwhile, at the U.N. Security Council, the United States casts the sole vote (veto) against a resolution that would have demanded that Israel halt its military offensive in Gaza.

July 14

Israel continues pounding southern Lebanon, southern Beirut, and sets fuel tanks ablaze at the Beirut International Airport.

Hezbollah launches a missile attack on an Israeli warship off the coast of Beirut, killing four sailors.

An emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council called by Lebanon convenes to discuss the possibility of a U.N.-mandated comprehensive ceasefire and lifting of the Israeli air and sea blockades of Lebanon. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton stands alone in refusing to even urge restraint from Israel, and instead blames Syria and Iran for the current crisis. In the shadow of yesterday’s U.S. veto, the session ends without taking any action.

July 15

Israel bombs bridges and roads across Lebanon, dividing the country and stranding civilians desperately fleeing its attacks.

July 16

Fighting continues to escalate over the weekend. Israel strikes throughout Lebanon, including Sour, Nabatiyeh, Ba’albek, and as far north as the port city of Tripoli, killing scores of civilians. Seven Canadians are killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese border town of Aitaroun. In southern Beirut, Israel introduces for the first time the use of U.S.-made GBU-28 guided bunker buster bombs in an attempt to destroy Hezbollah underground bunkers within the city. Several 12 to 15-story buildings completely collapse into mountains of rubble (eerily reminiscent of Ground Zero after September 11th). Large areas of the city are levelled. South of Beirut, Israeli forces bomb the Jiyeh power plant. The cumulative death toll in Lebanon reaches 160, overwhelmingly civilian, since the fighting began four days ago.

A Hezbollah rocket attack in Haifa kills 8 people. Others hit Tiberias, Nazareth, Afula, Givat E’la, and the Sheba’a Farms settlement in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The cumulative death toll in Israel reaches 24, 12 civilian and 12 military.

Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz signals an escalation in military strategy from trying to secure the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah to the aim of permanently removing Hezbollah from southern Lebanon – essentially the area south of the Litani River.

Media commentary widely adopts the notion that Israel is exacting “collective punishment” on Lebanese and Palestinian residents, in effect holding them responsible for the respective actions of Hezbollah and Hamas. The Israeli calculation appears to be that collective punishment through widespread bombing and destruction will intimidate public opinion into opposing Hezbollah and Hamas.

July 17

Israel aircraft bomb the Palestinian Foreign Ministry offices in Gaza. Sustained Israeli bombardments continue in Lebanon.

July 20

U.S. Marines begin evacuating American citizens via amphibious landing craft from a beach north of Beirut before ferrying them to Cyprus.

Diplomatic efforts accelerate to deploy a U.N. or NATO peacekeeping force to introduce a buffer between the Israeli and Hezbollah forces along the Israel-Lebanon border.

July 22

An advanced force of 2,000 Israeli troops with tanks and armored bulldozers move across the Lebanese border under the cover of a fierce barrage of air strikes. This is in anticipation of a massive ground offensive to sweep Hezbollah forces out of the area south of the Litani River.

July 24

Fierce bombardments by both sides continue throughout the week, but there is always an immense military asymmetry between Israel and Hezbollah. The official cumulative death tolls reach 380 in Lebanon, over 100 in Palestine, versus 37 in Israel. The World Health Organization estimates that up to 600,000 people have been displaced by Israeli bombing in Lebanon.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice begins a trip to the Middle East, but without any specific proposals for a ceasefire or diffusing the crisis. Her main preoccupation appears to be limited to finding a way to curb Hezbollah and putting the Lebanese government in control of the area south of the Litani River.

Ten observations

Several significant points emerge from the unfolding events in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon.

First, the capture of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit on June 25 was not an unprovoked aggression. It was immediately preceded by a series of Israeli shellings, rocket attacks, and commando raids on Gaza that killed over three dozen people, mostly civilians. Even the earlier Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel beginning on June 9th were in response to a series of Israeli assaults on the Palestinian Authority in particular and Palestinian sovereignty in general.

Second, the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah on July 12 was in support of Palestinians trapped and under almost continuous siege in Gaza. It was also a reaction to the virtual dismemberment of the Palestinian government through Israel’s widespread arrests of its elected political leaders. No people would be able to tolerate such a physical assault on their democratic political institutions and society.

Third, all meaningful proposals for ceasefires came from the Palestinian side and the Lebanese government. All Palestinian and Lebanese ceasefire proposals were summarily rejected by the Israeli government, which placed decidedly asymmetric conditions on the acceptance of any ceasefire.

Fourth, both in Gaza and in Lebanon, Israeli attacks deliberately targeted essential infrastructure – roads, bridges, airports, seaports, and power stations. These targets have little military significance to militias like those of Hamas and Hezbollah. Yet they are crucial for the civilian population, for the movement of food and medicines, and for escape routes. The systematic destruction of Lebanon’s transport infrastructure had no more immediate effect than to deny all Lebanese citizens and foreigners routes of escape from the heavy Israeli bombardments.

Fifth, both in Gaza and in Lebanon, Israel’s deliberate policy was to exact collective punishment on all residents in the hopes of putting pressure on the militias from within. The plan is more likely to have the opposite effect of galvanizing a broad range of popular support behind the militias in much the same way that the Israeli assault on the Palestinian government and Gaza brought Hamas and Fatah much closer together.

Sixth, the U.S. government’s unconditional support for Israel, and unwavering rejection of ceasefire proposals, does not even pretend to advocate a peaceful resolution of the crisis. The U.S. government’s prior role as peacemaker, however partial, in the Camp David Accords in 1978 and the Oslo Accords in 1993, has apparently been abandoned. This extreme position will only further galvanize Arab and Muslim public opinion against the U.S. government and exacerbate declining U.S. credibility in the region.

Seventh, the cut-off of Palestinian tax revenues by Israel and the severance of direct aid by the U.S. and European Union in response to the lawful installation of a democratically-elected government in Palestine belie the U.S. and Israeli commitment to democracy. They also reflect an utter disregard for the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people who had already been cut off from their jobs and only means of livelihood in Israel since the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000. The potential collapse of the Palestinian Authority would bring complete anarchy to an already chaotic situation, and unleash heretofore unseen forces from inside the Palestinian resistance.

Eighth, the iron-handed control that Israel continues to exercise over the movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza belies the political and economic reality of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005. Ten months after that withdrawal, Gaza residents are as much at the mercy of Israeli restrictions as ever. Even the movement of people and goods between Gaza and Egypt, which share a common land border, remains under strict Israeli military control.

Ninth, Israel’s repeated suggestions that it might assassinate Palestinian leaders, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, demonstrate complete disregard for the rule of law and Palestinian national sovereignty. Its arbitrary arrests of Palestinian cabinet ministers and legislators prove that it may act with impunity against any duly-elected Palestinian government not to its liking.

Tenth, the slanted language of war belies the objectivity of U.S. policy as well as the impartiality of news coverage. Israeli soldiers are “kidnapped” or “abducted”, but Palestinian leaders are “arrested” or “apprehended”. Palestinian militants are “terrorists”, but the massive Israeli air strike that left a vast gaping Ground-Zero-like hole in the midst of high-rise residential buildings in southern Beirut is “Israel’s right to defend itself”.

Windows of opportunity to bring about peaceful settlements

A careful examination of the sequence of events over the past six months reveals that Israel is threatened only for reasons that are traceable back to its own disproportionate actions. The traditional Hamas position of refusing to recognize Israel must be re-evaluated in the light of that organization assuming the reins of political power in a democratically-elected government. As events have now proven, on June 27 Hamas signed a document that effectively recognizes the state of Israel, accepting a two-state solution for the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel. Both Israel and the U.S. lost an unprecedented opportunity to politically engage the Hamas government, a government that, unlike the Fatah government, is effectively in a position to implement a lasting peace from the Palestinian side. Former President Yasser Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, have been trapped in space and time – in Ramallah and unable to move forward to statehood and a lasting peace with Israel – because of their lack of influence over the militias, including Hamas and the Palestinian guerrilla groups based in Lebanon. Hamas, on the other hand, in a potential peace settlement with Israel is in a position to ask Palestinian militias to lay down their arms and make it happen.

It is time that the U.S. government see that unconditional support for Israel’s current reckless course will neither lead to peace nor stability in the Middle East. As the world’s sole superpower, as Israel’s primary backer, and as an aid provider to Palestine, the U.S. is in a unique political position to broker a ceasefire and diffuse the current crisis. In fact, with Hamas in power in Ramallah, it has an historical opportunity to bring about a two-state solution and a practical final peace in the region. It also has a unique historical opportunity to diffuse the broader risks of mass destruction in the Middle East by offering to broker the mutual denuclearization of Iran and Israel. Whereas Iran may find it difficult for domestic political reasons to halt its nuclear program under unilateral external pressure, it may well be willing to step down from dual-use nuclear technology if Israel does the same and gives up the operational nuclear weapons already in its arsenal. Actually, Israel will be the harder party to convince. But the entire Middle East will become a safer place without nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons programs. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “doomsday clock” will be able to be set back a few more minutes. The choices are clear: reduce the combustibles on all sides while there is a window of opportunity, or let the wildfires burn.

(Sharat G. Lin writes on global political economy, India, and the Middle East. He lived in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, and spent time in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Captured by a Palestinian militia in 1973, he has first-hand experience of their internal workings.)


6. Israel Responded to an Unprovoked Attack by Hizbullah, Right? Wrong
The assault on Lebanon was premeditated - the soldiers' capture simply provided the excuse. It was also unnecessary
by George Monbiot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(George Monbiot is a journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist in the United Kingdom.)