More pots and kettles

Arutz Sheva’s David Lev is scandalised that the PA has launched a plan

to commemorate the actions of terrorists who are still alive, serving sentences in Israeli prisons.

At least 100 streets in PA cities will be named for these terror prisoners, said PA Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqi announced last week.

The terrorists to be honored in this manner have all been convicted for directly participating in or helping plan terror attacks in which Israelis were killed, and all have been sentenced by Israel to at least 20 years in prison.

Israel would never commemorate terrorists like that, unless...

Last week the Hasbara buster quoted from a biography of Irgum leader David Raziel:

On July 6,1938, time bombs were put in milk cans and placed in the Arab market place in Haifa by an Irgun member dressed as an Arab porter. In the explosion that followed, 21 Arabs were killed and 52 wounded. Terror spread throughout the Arabs of Haifa, among the most vicious of the enemies of Zionism.

The attack was in reaction to the murder of two Jews the previous day in Jerusalem, and the Arabs of Jerusalem were not to be spared. A bomb thrown into a crowd of Arabs on David Street in the Old City killed two and wounded four. Two days later, the Irgun threw a bomb into a crowd of Arabs waiting near the bus terminal near Jaffa Gate. Three were killed and 19 injured. A week later, on a Friday, as Arabs left their mosque at the foot of David Street in the Old City, an electronically detonated mine went off killing ten Arabs and wounding 30.

On July 25, 1938, a 30-kilogram explosive went off in the Arab market place in Haifa. Hidden in a barrel of sour pickles, it killed at least 35 Arabs and wounded 70 more. The Arabs were terrified; (...) Raziel was content.

One month later, the Irgun switched to Jaffa, a nest of the worst gangs of Arab vipers in the country. An Irgun member, once again dressed as an Arab porter, placed a bomb in the Arab Dir-a-Salach marketplace. The official version listed 21 Arabs dead and 35 wounded. In reality many more went to heaven.

February 27, 1939, proved to be yet another "Black Day" for the Arabs as the Irgun, sensing collapse of Arab terror in the face of Jewish vengeance, attacked in three cities. In Haifa, two powerful explosions went off, one at the ticket window of the railroad station in East Haifa and the other at the Arab market place. At least 27 Arabs were killed. Half-an-hour later in Jerusalem, three Arabs were killed and six wounded in an Irgun explosion on David Street while another died after being attacked on an Arab bus passing Machane Yehuda.

The Hasbara buster concludes,

One would hope for this beast to be fully repudiated by Israel. One would hope in vain. Today, Israel celebrates this mass-murderer with a village named after him, Ramat Raziel, which is located in the Jerusalem corridor. Streets in all major Israeli cities bear his name as well.

I shudder to think how many places bear the names of Menachem Begin, who ‘has streets and parks named after him in no less than 43 communities’ and the other bloodthirsty gunmen who roamed Palestine in the middle of last century, and ever since.

A dangerous man

According to an AAP report in this morning’s Canberra Times,

CONFESSED terrorism supporter David Hicks is expected to arrive in Adelaide about nine o'clock (Adelaide time) this morning as the US military and the Australian Government maintain a veil of secrecy over his release from Guantanamo Bay.

Hicks is apparently so dangerous that he had to be flown to Adelaide in a privately chartered jet, at a cost to the Australian taxpayer of half a million dollars, according to Greens leader Bob Brown. He is so dangerous that that jet was not permitted into US airspace and had to fly over Mexico, refuelling in the French colony of Tahiti. As the French love terrorism anyway, there was no problem about that. Doubtless all these precautions are well justified. There’s no telling what damage a guy like Hicks could do to the innocent and unsuspecting US, bound and hooded from 38,000 feet after five years under constant scrutiny. He might have managed to secrete some toothpaste and sports drink about his person, and you know what that means. These confessed terrorism supporters are a wily mob.

The ABC, with its more measured ‘Convicted terrorism supporter’ line, reports

He will serve the remainder of his nine-month sentence for providing material support for terrorism alongside some of Australia's most notorious criminals including the infamous bodies in the barrel killers John Bunting and Robert Wagner.

An who could provide more appropriate company for a guy who has never harmed anybody?

Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says he does not know if Hicks is dangerous or just deluded.

But there’s no doubt whatsoever about the abominable Ruddock. Thousands of refugees can attest that he is a truly dangerous man. And some have not lived to be able to testify that he wantonly returned them to countries where their fear of persecution was not only well founded, but in the end borne out by their disappearance at the hands of a stable and peaceful state.

Hicks may have confessed under duress, but Howard and Ruddock and Bush and Blair and their ilk freely – proudly – admit their crimes against humanity and fly through any airspace they like.

Pots, kettles

‘Olmert a “terrorist”’

A Palestinian source called Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Kadima a "terrorist" and accused him of transferring more than $1 billion to militants to carry out attacks against Lebanon, in an interview with The Bureau of Counterpropaganda released Friday.

Olmert said the statements were "confused and irresponsible".

Palestine has been urging other countries to shun Olmert and the Israeli government, citing Israel’s refusal to recognize Palestine or renounce violence.

"He's a terrorist," added the source. "You have a terrorist who is prime minister of the State of Israel now."

The Bureau learned that the funds came from outside Israel and were transferred to the Israeli armed forces for the "explicit purpose of carrying out terrorist actions." Outside sources also transferred large quantities of sophisticated armaments for terrorist purposes. These included obsolete cluster munitions known to have high failure rate, deliberately strewn throughout southern Lebanon in the last hours of last summer’s war with the specific intention of killing and maiming unsuspecting civilians and UN mine disposal personnel.

He offered no other details about the transfer.

A Palestinian security source said Palestine believes that Olmert was directly involved in the decision to make the transfer, which took place last summer.

"The terrorist is the one who kills children, raids villages and [refugee] camps, builds settlements and confiscates the land. It is not Ismail Haniyeh."

[With apologies to Ha’aretz.]

Not your guinea pigs

Without provocation

Writing about Israeli racism, ‘Fighting Jim Crow in Israel’, Mike Whitney, makes some useful points. But he seems to believe that ‘Nations, like people, can change their behavior if they see it is in their own best interests.’ This is unnecessarily naïve. Israel needs to change more than its behaviour. The very racism he identifies in Israeli behaviour arises directly from the racism that underlies the entire Zionist project. In advocating ‘move towards an integrated, multi-ethnic society’, he implicitly rejects this, but offers no more by way of a strategy than ‘Israel should consider the same path that every other democratic, pluralistic society has taken; tear down the walls, amend the laws so that everyone’s rights are respected equally’. As if! And he doesn’t even mention the refugees – one of the central issues that needs to be addressed before justice, and the potential for peace, will come to Palestine.

In his latest brilliant diatribe against the execrable Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Professor of Torture, Norman Finkelstein aptly quotes Hitler’s Commissar Order:

In the fight against Bolshevism it must not be expected that the enemy will act in accordance with the principles of humanity or international law - any attitude of consideration or regard for international law in respect of these persons is an error.

As Finkelstein emphasises, this has an uncannily familiar ring to it. Now, ‘we’ are ‘facing an unprecedented threat’ requiring ‘us’ to dispense with any consideration of civilians in waging ‘war’ against it.

I’m delighted to be able to report that the eminent Robert Fisk shares my scepticism about the Heathrow gatorade terrorism plot, although he doesn’t mention November’s US mid term elections as a factor:

And I'm sure it's quite by chance that the lads in blue chose yesterday - with anger at Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara's shameful failure over Lebanon at its peak - to save the world. After all, it's scarcely three years since the other great Terror Plot had British armoured vehicles surrounding Heathrow on the very day - again quite by chance, of course - that hundreds of thousands of Britons were demonstrating against Lord Blair's intended invasion of Iraq.

He also has intelligent things to say about anti Muslim racism, the terror he and other Beirut residents have been experiencing for over a month, and the real causes of the retail terrorism that the ‘war on terror’ aims to eradicate, or exacerbate, through wholesale terror.

Ha’aretz reports that, in response to accusations by the Palestnian Israeli legal association:

In reference to the incident in Qana, in which many Lebanese civilians were killed in an Israel Air Force strike on a heavily populated building, [attorney Nick] Kaufman [who was the prosecutor at the international former Yugoslavia trial, which ruled, "The international community must not tolerate such crimes, no matter where they may be perpetrated, no matter who the perpetrators are and no matter what the reasons for them may be.”] says that the killing was apparently inadvertent. "It was not malicious, not intentional and not impulsive. This was not a criminal action," he said.

According to Kaufman, there have been instances reminiscent of the current situation in Lebanon that have not been considered in violation of international law, such as the current U.S. military operation in Iraq.

Can’t quibble with that. A perfect illustration that ‘international law’ does not apply to actions, but to actors, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Further to the last post, here is a link to part two of the Shaoul article on the Israeli ‘peace movement’ on WSWS.

There’s been a lot of intelligent commentary on UNSC 1701, but one aspect that nothing I’ve seen so far has touch upon is in Article 6, which:

Calls on the international community to take immediate steps to extend its financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and, under the authority of the government of Lebanon, reopening airports and harbors, consistent with paragraphs 14 and 15, and calls on it also to consider further assistance in the future to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Lebanon.

Now how does it come to pass that anyone could envisage that it is the responsibility of ‘the international community’, that is, taxpaying grunts around the world, to clean up the mess that Israel made? I suppose US taxpayers footed the bill for the planes and ordnance, and paid for Bush and Rice and Bolton to prevent a timely ceasefire, and underwrote the people who either directed or approved Israel to cause the damage, so they ought to contribute something to the cleanup. But surely the Israelis must bear some responsibility?

For a moving and insightful commentary, Azmi Bishara writes in al Ahram, ‘The peoples of the world are divided into the haves and have-nots of F-15s and F-16s.’

Last night Sam Bahour sent around this timely reminder on his ePalestine list:

“I want to make it clear: This morning’s events were not a terrorist attack but the action of a sovereign state that attacked Israel for no reason and without provocation. The Lebanese government, of which Hezbollah is a member, is trying to undermine regional stability. Lebanon is responsible and Lebanon will bear the consequences of its actions.” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, July 12, 2006

There was an interesting article in yesterday’s NYT providing a blow by blow account of the negotiations leading to UNSC1701. It suggests that the deal on the final wording arose from US concern about Israel losing the war:

As evidence of how committed the United States had become to the notion that an Israeli military victory was no longer an option, Ms. Rice and other administration officials posed pointed questions to the Israelis about the likely consequences of an intensified military push.

While omitting passages referring to Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the drafters still wanted

to give the force the power that France, the United States and Israel felt it needed to keep Hezbollah from reoccupying southern Lebanon.

But southern Lebanon is where Hizballah were born and raised and have always lived. Why shouldn’t they occupy it? Unless of course, ethnic cleansing is the name of the game.

I heard last night that the ceasefire was holding, at the same time as they reported that Israeli troops had killed one ‘Hisballah fighter’ who was threatening them. It was probably just some poor guy coming to give them a cake or something.

Robert Fisk is predicting that the ceasefire will not last:

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks--but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

"The Lebanese government is our address for every problem or violation of the [ceasefire] agreement," Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said yesterday, as if realising the truce would not hold.

And that, of course, provides yet another excuse for Israel to attack the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon.

I have often wondered when reading George Lakoff whether he is actually aware of the ‘frames’ he is using himself. It seemed implausible, but my inclination was to give him the benefit of the doubt, despite his weird notion that the Democratic party was, or could become, if they framed their policies correctly, a progressive force. Robert Jensen shares my concern in his review of Lakoff’s latest book:

Ironically, Lakoff's new book -- Whose Freedom? The Battle over America's Most Important Idea -- demonstrates that problem all too well. His worldview seems to keep him from the very critical self-reflection that he counsels for liberal/progressive people.

Information Clearing House posted an interesting piece by Antony D’Amato this morning dissecting UNSC1701.

OP1. Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah has called this provision unfair: it only bars "offensive" military operations by Israel while prohibiting "all" Hezbollah attacks. Yet this is what lawyers would call a distinction without a difference. So long as Hezbollah ceases all attacks, Israel would not have any justification for offensive or defensive operations.

The problem with this analysis is that the distinction does make a difference. Israel claims that its devastation of Lebanon over the last month was entirely defensive. Indeed, I’m not aware of any military action Israel has ever engaged in, whether against neighbouring states or against the Palestinians under their occupation, that was anything other than defensive in character. This is patently rubbish, as anyone can attest. But when push comes to shove, it will be up to the US, in the guise of John Bolton who will determine whether Israel has violated the letter or the spirit of 1701, and I don’t think there is any doubt how that will swing. Meanwhile, Hizballah is banned from taking any military action whatsoever against the Israeli troops occupying their country. So go figure.

D’Amato considers article OP6, calling on ‘the international community’ to clean up Israel’s mess, ‘A sound humanitarian provision to which no one could object.’ Well, maybe not quite no one, as noted above.

He anticipates that OP8, which creates a ‘security zone’ from the Blue Line to the Litani, will be an ‘economic bonanza’ for the region. That must be why they decided to create it on Lebanese territory, rather than on the Israeli side of the line! He goes on to envisage, ‘Not only will displaced Lebanese civilians return to the area, but Palestinian refugees might also emigrate there to take up the many jobs that will be created.’ So it will also assist in the Israeli ambition to transfer the Palestinians out of Palestine.

And finally, today’s Times reports:

The Lebanese war also raises even more serious questions, suggests Shai Feldman, director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis, about the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Israel respected the international border with Lebanon as verified by the United Nations, and it was Hezbollah that violated the border. “If international borders mean nothing,” Mr. Feldman asked, “why should the Israeli public support a withdrawal from the West Bank to create a Palestinian state?”

Preserving the idea of a two-state solution is one reason Mr. Olmert went to war, Mr. Feldman said. And it is one reason the Security Council acted as strongly as it did to defend the integrity of the international border and mandate an expanded United Nations force to protect it. But whether Israelis will trust those guarantees is yet another open question.

In NYT parlance, apparently, daily flights across the border with sonic booms over populated areas for a period of years constitutes respect for the border. Steven Erlanger may be right to assert that Olmert’s objective was to preserve the idea of a two state solution, but surely everything he’s said and done shows that he will go to any length to avoid the idea becoming a reality. In any case, creating a sectarian non Jewish state alongside the sectarian Jewish state has never been a solution to anything.

Reductio ad absurdum

I seem to be falling behind, and as I will be on the road for the next several weeks, this situation is likely to persist. A few days ago, I received a link to this analysis by Michel Chossudovsky ("Triple Alliance": The US, Turkey, Israel and the War on Lebanon). The paper was in my view much too long and didn’t really contribute much, but concludes with an interesting approach to ‘international law’, which I interpreted as a reductio ad absurdum argument, although I’m not at all confident it was intended that way.

Worth reading however, is ‘War now, peace later: Israel’s doves line up behind war Part one’ By Jean Shaoul in the 12 August WSWS. I’m looking forward to part 2.

Last night while subjecting myself to CNN, there was a long interview with Israeli ambassador to the US, Daniel Ayalon. I could hardly believe how cynical and mendacious he was. When asked whether he thought Hizb'allah would abide by the ceasefire, and he went on about how you couldn’t trust people who…and went on to spin a buch of crap about alleged Hizballah atrocities. Until, that is, they broadcast FM Tzipi Livni’s statement on the Israeli cabinet’s ‘acceptance of the UNSC resolution. She blathered on about how they would never consider a prisoner swap and effectively said that while the cabinet accepted the resolution, they weren’t about to comply with it in any meaningful sense, even though Israeli officials had drafted it and it was very advantageous to Israel. It was amazing how self righteous Ayalon and Livni sounded about how important it was to ensure that every UN resolution was implemented to the letter. CNN is a real education. Meanwhile, they've been dropping as many bombs as they can on Beirut before the ceasefire takes effect in what was then about 16 hours' time – now about half an hour off. It’s a funny way to prepare for a ceasefire. I'm not optimistic. Hizb'allah says they'll go on fighting until the last Israeli soldier leaves, apparently, and Israel says it will only fire in self defence. But then, when has Israeli ever done anything that was not in self defence?

A friend wrote the other day:

In your True to Form article, you say:

And they have united the Arab ‘street’ across the Middle East, undermining the Sunni-Shi’a split and threatening the ‘moderate’ Arab monarchies and dictatorships beloved of the US. You’d almost think these were unintended consequences. But can they really be so stupid as not to have anticipated these outcomes?

All the evidence I've seen indicates that Israel didn't anticipate things to fall out this way. The military promised the Government that it would all be over in days, and the Government promised Bush it would, too. What they got, however, was a war against an opponent who knew how to fight & had the arms to take out some of Israel's high price-tag equipment.

They definitely weren't bargaining on losing an F16, or on losing 15 tanks on Thursday 10 August alone.

From what I understand, Bush is ropeable with Olmert, and the press are full of stories about the backbiting going on in Israel about this developing disaster. And make no mistake - this war is a disaster for Israel. The illusion of invincibility generated by the 6 Day War & the Yom Kippur War has been blown to smithereens. There will now be a lot more pressure for a faction of "realists" to emerge amongst the Zionists, people who recognise that Israel cannot be a new Sparta, and who decide that a deal of some sort with the Palestinians is a necessity. The longer this war goes on, the greater the repurcussions will be. Unless Israel suffers even more serious military setbacks, however, the fallout probably won't be seen until afterwards.

In Solidarity,

Ablokeimet.

"Who was that?" "Oh, just a bloke I met."

And here is my response:

…

As for the substance of your comment, there have been reports that the Israeli military has been planning just such a 'retalliation' ever since Hizb'allah evicted them in 2000 and that this specific campaign was planned over a year ago and divulged in confidence to the US government and even the media and has been simulated and trained for. That plan is purported to have been for a campaign of several weeks' duration. If so, then I don't think it is correct that they expected it to be over in days, although media reports at the time, before the existence of the plan became public knowledge, certainly suggested that.

That said, I'm sure you're right that the steadfastness of the resistance has taken a lot of people by surprise. As I've written somewhere recently, probably in this blog, I consider it imprudent to underestimate the adversary's intelligence. So I tend to operate on the assumption that they have thoroughly thought things through and that whatever the actual turn of events, it is a scenario they have considered and planned for, if only as a contingency. So what surprises me is that to all appearances, Israel's brilliant military planners are on the back foot and were not ready at all for the entirely predictable eventualities.

Unfortunately, the pan Arab uprising that looked like a real possibility a few weeks ago has not happened yet and with the passage of time, I think the likelihood is fading. I'd like to think another Qana or the like might be the last straw, but the bombing of the civilian convoy near Sidon the other night doesn't seem to have triggered anything.

The realistic Zionists know that a Jewish majority cannot be maintained in "Israel proper', much less in the expanded Israel they yearn for, over the long term. If there were a just resolution of the refugees' plight, a Jewish majority would not be sustainable even over the short term. That's what they mean when they speak of the right of return leading to 'national suicide' - with a non Jewish majority, the Jewish state cannot survive.

For a Zionist - for someone who believes that a sectarian Jewish state in Palestine has 'a right to exist' as such - this has certain consequences. A couple of years ago, in an interview in Ha’aretz, prominent revisionist historian, Benny Morris, who was among the first to document the ethnic cleansing that lies at the heart of the Jewish state, was honest enough to enunciate these:

…this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.

If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will be because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself.

The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb…They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then…If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified.

Obviously, this is not the kind of realist you are talking about. My point is that this is what reality entails for those intent on the survival of Israel as a Jewish state. Maybe you define Zionist differently?

The suggestion that ‘a deal of some sort with the Palestinians is a necessity’ opens a bit of a can of worms. Since the Oslo fiasco in 1993, ‘the Palestinians’ has always been taken to denote the corrupt, morally and financially bankrupt, quisling Palestinian Authority. But, just like a real state, the PA doesn’t even represent its own constituency. And just like Israel, it purports to, but absolutely does not, represent the diaspora.

In my view, the election of a Hamas led government in January had the potential to address at least in part the corruption and the quisling nature of the PA, but I think the Israelis have now rendered that moot. Hamas might have even considered the needs of the refugees in a way that the old Fatah PA never did. But that is not the same as representing them. They don’t even get to vote in PA elections, much less have any real sway over the PA’s actions. In any case, I think you will agree that the right to return is not negotiable. In principle, if rights of this kind have any meaning, they are individual rights, so nobody can negotiate them away on behalf of each individual refugee. Furthermore, if you believe that a right is inalienable, even the individuals who ‘possess’ them can’t negotiate over them.

There can never be peace without justice. And in this situation justice transparently entails redress for the refugees, including the right of return, which would at least erode the Jewish majority as an immediate consequence and certainly terminate the Jewish majority in due course, if not immediately. So even if the existence of a sectarian Jewish state in some distorted way could be seen as consistent with justice, there is no way it can survive what justice requires.

Leaving aside the substance of ‘a deal of some sort with the Palestinians’, the question arises of who will endorse any deal negotiated with, say, the PA? Would there be a global referendum that all Palestinians can participate in? If so, how could you be sure that nobody was disenfranchised? Would it be good enough just to canvass the views of those living in the camps? If not, in what sense would the deal be with the Palestinians, other than in the restricted and meaningless sense of the PA?

To cut to the chase, it seems to me that anyone who is realistic about their Zionism ultimately has to agree with Morris that ‘it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings… We are doomed to live by the sword.’ In other words, a new Sparta is precisely what a ‘realistic’ Zionism means.

Morris envisaged circumstances in which he thought it would become acceptable to complete the expulsion of 1948:

If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential.

Sometimes I think that Israel’s most recent wave of bombings and shellings, particularly in the wake of the media construction of an ‘Iranian nuclear threat’, is an attempt to manufacture a situation where they can justify further ethnic cleansing to themselves.

A NYT editorial the other day opined:

The resolution that the Council finally passed last night will have to be put into effect as quickly and thoroughly as possible, and must lead to a lasting political solution that can avoid future conflicts. That will require more than just an immediate halt to hostilities by both sides and an early withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon. It will also require the dispatch of an international military force with sufficient authority and firepower to guarantee that there can be no repeat of the Hezbollah provocations that set off this destructive conflict.

As hard as it will be to seal the border against Hezbollah infiltrations into Israel, that will not be enough. Hezbollah has rockets that can be fired from deep inside Lebanon at targets deep inside Israel. These must be stopped as well, ideally by the full disarmament of Hezbollah that the Security Council first called for in 2004.

Obviously, it is Hizballah that must be fully disarmed, in accordance with the UNSC’s dictates. One of the problems with the UN is that its membership is national states. ‘Non state actors’, like Hizballah, simply do not have standing. It is illegitimate for them to defend themselves or others, even where the state that claims jurisdiction does not possess the inclination or the capacity to do so, or as in the case of Lebanon, either the capacity or the inclination. The UN can pass judgement on a non state actor, provided that the US agrees, but the subject of the judgement has no say, no defence, no representation. By the same token, it doesn’t appear to occur to the UN, or most of the commentators, that the party that really needs comprehensive disarmament is the aggressor.

…Washington, which rightly stood by Israel but wrongly refused to call for a cease-fire or engage in meaningful diplomacy with Syria, also paid a price that could further complicate problems in Iraq and Afghanistan. A rapid and effective follow-through on yesterday’s resolution could make up for some of these losses. Anything less will only compound the damage already done.

The real issue, as always, is problems for the US in its humanitarian work.

And on ‘The London Plot’, the NYT again:

Here is what we want to do in the wake of the arrests in Britain. We want to understand as much as possible about what terrorists were planning. To talk about airport security and how to make it better. To celebrate what worked in the British investigation and discuss how to push these efforts farther. It would be a blessed moment in modern American history if we could do that without turning this into a political game plan.

Now I’m going to be doing a lot of flying over the next few weeks and I don’t welcome the inconvenience of increased ‘security’ at the airports. I am not as distressed as some people I’ve been corresponding with about checking the laptop. But when you’re moving for a period of years, you really need the cabin baggage to stay under the 20kg checked baggage limit. None of the coverage I’ve seen has mentioned whether the airlines are relaxing their checked baggage weight limits to compensate when they insist you check your cabin baggage.

As for security, I’d feel a lot more secure if, for example, the US withdrew its troops from Iraq and stopped sending bunker busters and daisy cutters to Israel.

And speaking of daisy cutters, the Times reports:

State Department officials “are discussing whether or not there needs to be a block on this sale because of the past history and because of the current circumstances,” said the senior official, adding that it was likely that Israel will get the rockets, but will be told to be “be careful.”

Everybody knows that these cluster munitions contain a lot of duds that lie around until some child wanders along and picks them up, losing an arm, or an eye, or a life. As Israel has almost exclusively targeted civilians and civilian areas, why would anyone trust them with such stuff, unless, of course, Arab lives have no value.

Terrorists foiled!

The most significant terrorist threat since 9/11. Red alert. Nipped in the bud. Peak of the tourist season. US carriers targeted.

I had a look at CNN and BBC world today and the terror scare has virtually banished coverage of Lebanon. Isn’t that convenient? Just like Lebanon shoved Gaza off the radar, and Gaza displaced coverage of the West Bank. So, is it real? Or is it just a convenient excuse to distract attention from the birth pangs of the New Middle East? The talking heads and the presenters all look so solemn and concerned.

Anyone aiming to massacre a lot of civilians would know that bringing down an airliner will definitely kill about 500. So, if there were just the 21 arrested, each on a separate plane, they could dispatch 10,500 or so. But if you really wanted to do a great deal of damage while conserving resources, you might think that a terrorist scare that brought tens of thousands to a major airport two hours earlier than usual, standing around going through enhanced security checks would provide a suitable opportunity. If there’s anything real about this, then I guess the antiterrorist authorities are in on it.

It’s a really nice touch making parents take a sip of their babies’ formula, just in case. It sends the message, ‘We know these terrorist bastards, and they are so cruel and cynical, that they would sacrifice their babies in pursuit of their dastardly aims.' If they are going to die anyway, wouldn’t they just grit their teeth and sip the formula.

Of course the great thing about foiling a terrorist attack is that you send all the cops running around everywhere looking like they’re doing something important in the public interest and nobody will ever know whether it was really going to happen, because it was foiled, after all, thank goodness.

But maybe the terrorists just want to cripple the US airline industry, as the pundits are predicting would have happened? Probably they have stock in Qantas or something?