Chutzpah redefined

‘We are going to demand compensation for loss of clientele, damage to sales, and damage to manufacturing capability.’ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3278932,00.html

‘The traditional definition of chutzpah says it's when you murder your parents, then plead for clemency because you're an orphan.’ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/opinion/02KRUG.html?ex=1393563600&en=f70ca455a31dd83d&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

Clearly that can now be improved upon. When you bomb a neighbouring country to smithereens and sue the government of that country to compensate you for the economic losses you have incurred – now that’s chutzpah!

Steven Zunes, who has written quite sensibly and cogently about the Walt and Mearscheimer dog wagging hypothesis (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3270) asserts:

The seizure of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militiamen, apparently taken in retaliation against Israeli attacks against civilian targets in the Gaza Strip, was clearly wrong. Israel would have a right to engage in a targeted paramilitary action to free the hostages and, if necessary, kill their captors. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-22forum22jul22,0,2216844.story?coll=sfla-news-opinion

This is really quite puzzling, as he goes on:

Israel holds thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners seized within the territory of those nations by Israeli forces. Most of these Arab prisoners have not engaged in terrorism and many are non-combatants. How is Israel's seizure and detention of these people different from Hezbollah's seizure and detention of the two Israeli soldiers? Does Israel's refusal to release its hostages give Lebanon or Palestine, if they were capable of it, the right to engage in a massive bombardment of civilian targets in Israel?

This is the wrong question. What he ought to be asking in this context is: Does Israel's refusal to release its hostages give Lebanon or Palestine, if they were capable of it, the right to detain Israelis for use in a prisoner swap? Framed in this way, it is obvious that Hizb’allah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers, apparently an exploit planned well in advance, or the Palestinian capture of Cpl Shalit, are not ‘clearly wrong’. These abductions differ only in scale from Israel’s ongoing proclivity to incarcerate Arabs for all practical purposes for the crime of being Arabs. It’s sad when people get so muddled.

This reminds me of a joke:

An Israeli and a Palestinian have just left court and are on the bus going to prison. The Palestinian asks the Israeli what he’s in for. The Israeli replies, ‘I ran over a kid in my car and left the scene of the accident. The poor kid is crippled for life.’ And the Palestinian asks how long his sentence was. The Israeli tells him he got six months and asks what he’s in for. ‘I was caught driving without headlights.’ ‘So what did they give you?’ ‘Six years.’ The Israeli tells the Palestinian that seems a bit extreme, but the Palestinian tells him, ‘Actually, the judge was quite lenient. He said he’d have given me life if I had done it after dark.’

Yesterday, The Forward, sent me this advert:

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But wait a second. Didn’t I just send you $3 billion? Oh, you spent it all on missiles. I guess that’s alright, then. I especially like the bit about ‘Anyone in need is being helped regardless of background or religious affiliation.’ Talk about chutzpah! I guess the Jews invented it, so we ought to be good at it

It’s getting a bit old by now, so I guess I’d better post this before it gets any older. If anyone is actually reading this blog, I strongly advise you to check out this brilliant analysis of an editorial in last Friday’s NY Times. I don’t think I could have done any better myself: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jul2006/nyti-j22.shtml. Onya, Bazza!

And speaking of old stuff, I recently came across Moshe Machover’s December 2004 piece on the apartheid metaphor: http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/article_417.shtml. I may do a little critique of it some time. Watch this space.

You’d think it would require a greater expenditure of resources to rebuild a power plant than to blow one up, but the generous Dr Rice yesterday ‘expressed concern for Lebanese suffering, and the United States said it would give $30 million to aid in the country’s recovery’. That’s about 20% of what the UN’s Jan Egeland said was essential just to keep the refugees alive for the next three months.

Monday, the United Nations appealed for $150 million in relief for Lebanon. Jan Egeland, who is in charge of humanitarian affairs for the United Nations, said the money was needed for emergency medicine, food and other supplies for the next three months. He said approximately 800,000 Lebanese had been affected by the bombardment.

I don’t think he factored in that the bombing and incursions haven’t stopped and the number of displaced people and lost infrastructure is only going to increase. And I don’t recollect anything about reconstruction in that figure. In contrast, the US probably provided 100% of the ordnance fired into Lebanon over the last fortnight. Which would certainly make the US responsible for what the Israelis are doing just as surely as the Iranians, who purportedly fund Hizb’allah to the tune of $100 million a year, must take the blame for Hizb’allah’s dastardly abduction of two enemy soldiers, etc. It’d be funny… http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/world/middleeast/25mideast.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th

The same article reports:

Responding to criticism over the large number of civilian deaths in Lebanon, Mr. Dichter said: “A war is not a surgical operation, and air war is not a surgical operation. You identify the targets, bombs are sophisticated and accurate. But you see a cement truck and from the air it looks just like a Katyusha truck. Sometimes from the air you hit the wrong target.”

Whoops! Don’t they reckon that foreseeable ‘collateral damage’ is equivalent to deliberately targeting civilians – if you expect something to happen and it does happen, it doesn’t matter if that wasn’t your stated objective. But that rule doesn’t apply to ‘us’. On the contrary, blowing up ambulances in a good cause is ok:

Overnight, two Red Cross ambulances were bombed within moments of each other while taking wounded people to Tyre, the Red Cross said. One man who was being transferred died of his wounds, while others were severely injured, and six paramedics were hurt in the attack, in the town of Qana.

Last week, the Times reported:

Opinion polls show that Israelis back the Lebanon campaign because they see Hezbollah as a clear threat. They have also become inured to international criticism. Uri Dromi, director of international outreach for the Israel Democracy Institute, said, “Public opinion is not so sensitive, because we feel, generally speaking, the world is against us and we’re a little island in an ocean of enmity.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/world/middleeast/19israel.html?th&emc=th

International criticism is so unjust - it just makes you want to cry.