Compelling logic

Writing in Pearls and irritations yesterday, elder statesman, Gareth Evans, presented his case for ‘Why Australia should recognise Palestinian statehood’, an issue I addressed recently.

He avers that ‘...recognised statehood’, would confer ‘extra legitimacy, leverage and bargaining power’ on Palestinians. And yet, as he acknowledges, ‘Recognition has already been accorded by some 140 countries’, but Palestinians still somehow enjoy none of those benefits.

Back in 2012, when the UN General Assembly decided ‘to accord to Palestine non-member observer State status in the United Nations’ [my emphasis], an elevation from ‘non-member observer entity status’, scholars of International Law confidently predicted exactly such leverage and bargaining power once the newly recognised State Of Palestine joined the Rome Statute, ICC, Law of the Sea Convention, etc. You don’t need to be a former foreign minister to observe that that has not worked out as anticipated, either.

Unambiguously revealing where his sympathies lie, Evans asserts that, ‘moving now to recognise Palestinian statehood would...benefit Israel...by creating new momentum for the two-state outcome that is the only credible path to its long-term security.’

The two-state outcome that Evans envisages is one that preserves Israel’s character as a Jewish ethnocracy. Indeed, that has been the whole point of proposals to partition historic Palestine, from the 1937 Peel Commission report onward. It has certainly never offered an equitable division of territory or resources.

If Israel is to provide some meaningful privileges to its Jewish population, then inequality for the non Jewish citizens is built in. Yet ‘a distinguished honorary professor’ sees ‘compelling logic’ in the assertion that ‘Israel can be a Jewish state, a democratic state, and one occupying the whole of historical Judea and Samaria [sic], but it cannot be all three.’ As if it could be both Jewish and democratic anywhere.

The function of a Palestinian state is to isolate Palestinians in an ethnically homogeneous enclave adorned with some of the trappings of political autonomy with a view to preventing their exercise of citizens’ or residence rights in the metropole, exactly analogous to Bophuthatswana.

Such a ‘solution’ solves little for the millions of stateless Palestinians subject to Israeli military occupation for 58 years. For the millions more stateless Palestinian refugees exiled for over 77 years, or two million twelfth class Israeli citizens, the Two State 'Solution' solves nothing.

Even if ethnic partition could ever be just, even if Israel had not expressed its intention in word and in deed to retain ‘Judea and Samaria’ forever, pundits have warned for decades that the ‘window of opportunity’ was about to shut.

In March 2009, for instance, former US National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and other luminaries warned that ‘the next six to twelve months may well represent the last chance for a fair, viable and lasting solution’, using fair and viable in their own idiosyncratic sense. Four years later, US Secretary of State John Kerry said, ‘I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting...two years, or it's over’.

Ten years down the track, the window of opportunity, such as it ever was, is not just closed, but boarded up and painted over. But an aspiring UN Secretary General still glimpses a chance to perpetuate apartheid, as if Israel were about to relinquish more than half a century’s ‘facts on the ground’ intended precisely to avert a Palestinian state.

Australian recognition of The State of Palestine can only cement Australia’s continuing recognition of apartheid Israel as such and extend legitimacy to the quisling Palestinian Authority.

An Australian government that wants to contribute to peace will impose comprehensive sanctions on Israel and organise a coalition to prevent Israel’s genocidal rampage from proceeding further, by force, if necessary.

Sitting on the sidelines

As I walked up the hill this morning, I was listening to the podcast of Wednesday’s Democracy now!, where Jeremy Woodrum, co-founder of the US Campaign for Burma, articulated how frustrated he is to see ‘one country…block the entire will of the international community’.

The problem is that China has almost single-handedly and unilaterally paralyzed the UN Security Council. They haven't made a single statement. They haven’t made a single resolution. They have done absolutely nothing. They're just sitting on the sidelines while Burma burns. It's hugely frustrating to see one country, China, be able to block the entire will of the international community.

The scary thing is not so much Woodrum’s apparent willful oblivion of the role of the UNSC, the nature of ‘the international community’, and the history of the use of the veto, but that he can present himself as a knowledgeable commentator and get away with it.

'Cowardly blending'

In his latest article on Counterpunch, Jonathan Cook, conducts a timely review of a few matters that have come to light in the year since Israel’s devastating war on Lebanon last July and August.

Among other things,

Recent reports have revealed that one of the main justifications for Hizbullah's continuing resistance -- that Israel failed to withdraw fully from Lebanese territory in 2000 -- is now supported by the UN. Last month its cartographers quietly admitted that Lebanon is right in claiming sovereignty over a small fertile area known as the Shebaa Farms, still occupied by Israel. Israel argues that the territory is Syrian and will be returned in future peace talks with Damascus, even though Syria backs Lebanon's position. The UN's admission has been mostly ignored by the international media.

Also, far from the unexpected wanton cross border ‘kidnapping’ of innocent Israeli reservists we’ve heard so much about,

Hizbullah had long been warning that it would seize soldiers if it had the chance, in an effort to push Israel into a prisoner exchange. Israel has been holding a handful of Lebanese

Israel had tried to justify its wanton bombing of civilian targets in Lebanon on the grounds that the unscrupulous Hizb’allah combatants were hiding and launching attacks on Israel from areas populated with concentrations of civilians. Doubtless there is much learned opinion on whether ‘international law’ deems this legitimate. As I read it, this is actually a step or two beyond ‘Duh! We didn’t know there’d be civilians there!’. It presupposes a doctrine that non combatants are legitimate targets if they are compelled to serve as human shields – in other words, humans are useless as shields. UN official, Jan Egeland, famously backed up Israel’s claim with his ill considered accusation of Hizb’allah of ‘cowardly blending’.

It turns out, however, that

…Hizbullah had invested much effort in developing an elaborate system of tunnels and underground bunkers in the countryside…Also, common sense suggests that Hizbullah fighters would have been unwilling to put their families, who live in south Lebanon's villages, in danger by launching rockets from among them. [my emphasis]

…According to the UNIFIL, some 33 of these underground bunkers ­ or more than 90 per cent -- have been located and Hizbullah weapons discovered there, including rockets and launchers, destroyed.

…Relying on military sources, Haaretz reported last month: "Most of the rockets fired against Israel during the war last year were launched from the 'nature reserves'." In short, even Israel is no longer claiming that Hizbullah was firing its rockets from among civilians.

Not only were Hizb’allah fighters not hiding among civilians, those levelling the accusation, the Israelis themselves, had in fact ’built many of its permanent military installations, including weapons factories and army camps, and set up temporary artillery positions next to -- and in some cases inside -- civilian communities in the north of Israel’, as Jonathan Cook was himself probably the only one to point out last year during the fighting, notwithstanding the military censor.

The Arab Association for Human Rights, based in Nazareth, has been compiling a report on the Hizbullah rocket strikes against Arab communities in the north since last summer. It is not sure whether it will ever be able to publish its findings because of the military censorship laws.

…The Association has…found that in every case there was at least one military base or artillery battery placed next to, or in a few cases inside, the community. In some communities there were several such sites.

Armed and uniformed soldiers are of course a common sight anywhere in Israel. They crowd every bus, every disco, every pizza parlour and felafel stand. But somehow, the hasbara machine has managed to paint the Hizb’allah fighters as those who are ‘cowardly blending’, while the Israelis doing exactly the same thing are heroic. And when a terrorist attacks the soldiers on a bus or at a felafel stand, the spin is always on the ‘collateral damage’, the innocent bystanders. They were the real targets, however many soldiers may have been in range. As far as I’m aware, we have only the hasbara establishment’s word for it that Palestinian terrorists always target civilians and any military losses are the real collateral damage. If that is the sole source, since we already know that they are the ones who would have us believe that the Israeli military never targets civilians and in fact goes to extraordinary lengths to absolutely rule out any accidental harm to civilians, I guess it must be true.

Jonathan was also among the only ones, if memory serves, who took on Human Rights Watch, when they

…argued that, because Hizbullah's basic rockets were not precise, every time they were fired into Israel they were effectively targeted at civilians. Hizbullah was therefore guilty of war crimes in using its rockets, whatever the intention of the launch teams. In other words, according to this reading of international law, only Israel had the right to fire missiles and drop bombs because its military hardware is more sophisticated -- and, of course, more deadly.

The HRW position is simply bizarre. It effectively advocates banning oppressed and occupied people from armed resistance and elevates it to a matter of principle. Meanwhile, with their inaccurate weapons, Hizb’allah managed to hit 119 Israeli soldiers, nearly three times as many as the 43 Israeli civilian victims, 18 of them Arab. And Israel’s precision weaponry killed over 1000 civilians, many times more than the handful of Hizb’allah fighters killed.

Hasbara is quite amazingly effective. The obvious, and obviously correct, interpretation of these data, particularly in historical context, is utterly off the radar. Only bolshie crackpots even consider the possibility either that Israel deliberately targeted civilians or that Hizb’allah might have tried to focus on military targets, even though it was clear at the time that that was precisely the situation. As more and more evidence comes to light, the lunar conspiracy theory will be shown to be as sound as it always has been. By then, unfortunately, the entire population of the civilised world will have fully internalised the myth of ‘cowardly blending’, if we haven’t already, just like we have the myth of ‘wiping Israel off the map’ and the Iranian nuclear weapons program, Saddam’s WMD, the Kosovo genocide, and a long, long list of other outright fabrications swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the vigilant, responsible, independent media.

Anyway, Jonathan, who does not resile from calling it as he sees it, concludes by summarising:

The evidence so far indicates that Israel:

· established legitimate grounds for Hizbullah's attack on the border post by refusing to withdraw from the Lebanese territory of the Shebaa Farms in 2000;

· initiated a war of aggression by refusing to engage in talks about a prisoner swap offered by Hizbullah;

· committed a grave war crime by intentionally using cluster bombs against south Lebanon's civilians;

· repeatedly hit Lebanese communities, killing many civilians, even though the evidence is that no Hizbullah fighters were to be found there;

· and put its own civilians, especially Arab civilians, in great danger by making their communities targets for Hizbullah attacks and failing to protect them.

It is clear that during the Second Lebanon war Israel committed the most serious war crimes

So it is not propitious that

In the meantime, there is every indication that Israel is planning another round of fighting against Hizbullah after it has "learnt the lessons" from the last war.

Good for the gander

…a clear and present danger to international peace and security. Its ambitions to become the dominant power in the region, its heavy-handed interference in the domestic affairs of its neighbors, its lavish support for terrorist groups, and its massive arms build-up all underscore the nature of the threat.

…in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and UN Security Council resolutions.

…economic sanctions have been presented as a possible means to influence the regime and persuade it that there will be a painful price for flouting the will of the international community. With the implementation of sanctions and the threat of further ones…sanctions may have more direct impact than skeptics believed.

Despite…destabilizing influence in the international arena, investors from around the world continue to supply vast sums of money that not only prop up the regime, but also serve to embolden it…

No, of course it’s not Israel that the AJC was writing of in its new pamphlet, The Ca$e for Targeted Sanctions. Needless to say, the cuddly peacelovers at the American Jewish Committee aver, ‘No nation should relish the idea of military confrontation…The object, it should be stressed, is not to target the Iranian people, but its government’s policies.’

That would be the same American Jewish Committee that wasted no time yesterday in issuing a statement that ‘condemns the decision of UNISON, Britain's largest trade union, to advocate for a total boycott of Israel’.

"With the UNISON action, the union representing more than one million workers in public services in the United Kingdom has now joined with the journalists and academics unions in a shameful hate campaign against the Jewish state."

The UNISON resolution makes no mention of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, yet calls for the removal of Israel's security fence, pejoratively referred to as the "Apartheid wall".

…"UNISON has aligned itself with these murderous, anti-democratic and viciously anti-Semitic forces."

Later this week the UNISON conference may consider a further resolution calling for divestment from pension funds "which may have investments in Israel or in key companies trading with Israel."

Both motions are anti-Semitic, attempting to put Israel beyond the pale, just as prior anti-Semitic movements targeted individual Jews and Jewish communities.

Just in case anyone has missed some of the action, ‘Iran’s nuclear weapons program is particularly worrisome’. Israel’s nuclear arsenal threatens nobody. ‘Experts believe that the regime is developing ballistic missiles to deliver nuclear weapons…and could wield its nuclear deterrent as political blackmail throughout the Middle East’. Some ‘experts’ believe that, some Israeli experts for example, but not the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei, for example. And it goes without saying that Israel’s actual nuclear arsenal blackmails nobody. ‘In light of these scenarios, the international community has turned to economic penalties to demonstrate to Iran’s policymakers that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable.’ But a nuclear armed Israel is not only acceptable, but desirable.

And economic penalties for ‘a clear and present danger’, ‘ambitions to become the dominant power in the region’, ‘heavy-handed interference’, ‘lavish support for terrorist groups’, ‘massive arms build-up’, ‘violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and UN Security Council resolutions’? Well they’re ok if the target is Iran, whose deadliest, most implacable enemies make those claims about it. But not if the target is Israel, which has demonstrated that it meets every one of the criteria the AJC cites to justify economic sanctions against it’s regional rival. Except one. Israel has not violated the NPT. That’s because Israel isn’t even party to the NPT, for obvious reasons.

Once again, we have an example of Israel’s shrillest defenders, ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.’ In their haste to accuse others of anti-Semitism, they display their own anti-Semitism, in the terms of the very ‘Working definition’ they helped draft. Apparently this proclivity for foot shooting has a long pedigree. On Tuesday, the AJC took umbrage when the UN Human Rights Council designated Israel ‘a permanent and separate agenda item’.

“No words can adequately describe how disappointing has been the performance of the UN Human Rights Council since its inception more than a year ago,” said AJC Executive Director David A. Harris…adding that this development is particularly painful for AJC, whose leaders were directly involved in helping to draft the human rights provisions in the UN Charter more than 60 years ago.

I suppose they should have taken more care to frame human rights provisions explicitly to exclude violations by Israel.

Soul searching

Colum Lynch reports from New York in this morning’s Melbourne Age that Lebanese Minister of Culture, Tareq Mitri, called yesterday’s UN Security Council decision to establish an international criminal tribunal to prosecute the masterminds of the February 2005 suicide-bomb killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, ‘the path of the salvation of Lebanon’.

The US also hailed the decision. "People who have committed political assassination need to be brought to justice," said Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the UN. "They cannot have impunity."

Mr Khalilzad acknowledged that the council's action might trigger a violent reaction, but he said "many of us believe that the risks of not moving forward are greater".

Political assassins must never go unpunished. That would send entirely the wrong signal. Unless, of course, they are committed in pursuit of a higher principle. Like Saddam Hussein, not to delve too deeply into ancient history. Oh, but that wasn’t a political assassination. That was a legitimate execution carried out on the express instructions of the sovereign people of Iraq after due process and a fair trial. Of course. Well, then, what about Uday and Qusay Hussein? They never had their day in court, did they? Were they political assassinations? Of course not! They were fugitives from justice. The legitimate invaders and occupiers of Iraq had decided they were a threat, tracked them down and shot them to pieces. It’s only fair. After all, America did it, so it wasn’t an assassination.

What about other unpunished political assassinations? It wasn’t all that long ago that Sheikh

Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli attack on March 22, 2004. While he was being wheeled out of an early morning prayer session, an Israeli helicopter gunship fired Hellfire missiles at Yassin and both of his bodyguards. They were killed instantly, along with eight other bystanders. Allegedly, more than a dozen people were injured in the operation, including two of Yassin's sons. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi replaced him as Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, and Rantissi himself was assassinated by Israel on April 17, 2004.

Anyway, same old, same old. It’s not who you kill – it’s who does the killing. If ‘we’ do it, or ‘our friends’ do it, it’s not political assassination. It’s execution, it’s killing a fleeing escapee, it’s combat… Same goes for terrorists, if you’re Jose Padilla, you’re a terrorist. If you’re Luis Posada Carriles, or Robert Ferro, you’re not.

So, anyway, you’d think that the Lebanese authorities might like to investigate and punish their own murderers, but as the BBC reported yesterday

A UN inquiry has suggested that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence forces played a role - which Syria denies.

And anyway, according to Robert Fisk in today’s Independent,

…the UN Security Council invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter to create a special international court to try the suspects in Hariri's murder but the very fact that the Lebanese government could not formally request the court spoke volumes about its own impotence.

The point is that tracking down the murderers of one rich former politician in February 2005 is of the utmost concern to the UN Security Council, while the well known murderers of over a thousand Lebanese civilians and UN personnel, including attacks on ambulances and other crimes against humanity, pissing all over the last remaining shreds of credibility the UN might have been able to lay claim to last July and August, well they’re Israeli, so that’s ok then. Anway, the Israelis have already had their own painful soul searching Winograd Commission inquiry that named names and blaced the blame on the highest levels of government. Curiously, among the 21 main findings summarised on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, there is no mention of the decimation of Lebanese infrastructure, the deaths or injuries, the Qana massacre, or indeed any indication with any concern other than Israel’s failure to win.

An independent UN?

Way back in September 2002, the leader of the free world made these remarks

The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?

I thought, well, if anyone is still entertaining any illusions that the UN is anything other than an instrument of US ‘foreign policy’, Dubya has well and truly put paid to that. It wasn’t the first time I’d made the mistake of overestimating the ability to arrive at obvious conclusions from the evidence presented.

Or the last. When Israeli bombers took out a UNIFIL ‘peacekeeper’ and his wife in Tyre on 17 July and the UN uttered not a peep, I was again surprised that people still harboured expectations of the by now thoroughly discredited ‘world body’. When they shelled the UNIFIL post at Khiyam for six hours on 25 July despite repeated requests to cease and Kofi Annan said he was ‘…shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defence Forces’, I thought perhaps the UN was finally going to grow a spine. But no, within a couple of days, he had recanted.

And yet, after its utter failure even to protest the slaughter of its own personnel at Israel’s hands, much less protect them, everybody still thought the UN was the agency to enforce a ceasefire. And what a ceasefire! Where Israeli Foreign Minister openly boasted of the Israeli government’s intimate involvement in setting its terms, and in the same breath expressed reservations about whether Israel would see fit to comply. Not to mention the cluster bomblets scattered all over southern Lebanon as a little parting gift just before the ceasefire took effect that are still killing and maiming UN disposal experts.

A series of surveys conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org and its research partners between July 2006 and March 2007, found overwhelming support for enhanced powers for the UN. In particular, across the fourteen countries where the question was asked, the average of 64% supported ‘Having a standing UN peacekeeping force selected, trained and commanded by the United Nations’. Majorities of up to 77% (Peru) favoured the measure, and even in Argentina and the Philippines, pluralities of 48% and 46%, respectively, were in favour. A surprising 72% in the US and 64% in Israel also supported it.

Clearly respondents have not thought too deeply about how such a force would achieve the kind of independence of individual countries that they seem to desire. Only 46% overall from the same fourteen countries supported ‘Giving the UN the power to fund its activities by imposing a small tax on such things as the international sale of arms or oil’. Only in France did a big majority (70%) agree with such an initiative. So did small majorities in China, Israel, and South Korea, and pluralities in six other countries. In the US, a plurality of 50% opposed the measure, as did 55% and 56% majorities in Peru and the Philippines.

Furthermore, it doesn’t go without saying that troops and officers, all of whom come from and owe allegiance to particular states, indeed, who are members of the armed forces of particular states, will actually be able to act independently of their home countries’ expressed interests in any given situation.

What emerges from this is a picture of a widespread illusion that the UN can and should have the power to act independently of the states that comprise it. There would seem to be little understanding of the role of the Security Council and the way the structure of the UN ensures that it can only act when the US, the world’s principal transgressor of ‘international law, agrees, and that when carrots and sticks fail to procure the votes it requires, the US will act without reference to the UN. The independent peacekeeping force, presumably also hamstrung by Security Council control, is obviously not going to be strong enough to challenge outright aggression by a strong state like the US or Israel in any case. Indeed, the history of UNIFIL and other UN peacekeeping operations are not such as to instil confidence that they can protect the innocent in zones of conflict, or keep the peace between determined antagonists, much less make peace.

So I think we have to interpret the results in the context of an understanding of a myth of UN neutrality and commitment to peace. What respondents seem to be trying to express through these surveys is that they prefer states acted responsibly and that there be some agency to constrain them.

In this context, overall 64% in those fourteen countries favoured ‘Giving the UN the authority to go into countries in order to investigate violations of human rights’. In a sample of twelve countries, 73% agreed that the Security Council should have the power to intervene in a country ‘To prevent severe human rights violations such as genocide’ and 74% ‘To defend a country that has been attacked’.

On the other hand, when asked ‘When dealing with international problems, [survey country] should be more willing to make decisions within the United Nations even if this means that [survey country] will sometimes have to go along with a policy that is not its first choice?’, overall only 45% of respondents in sixteen countries agreed to limiting the independence of ‘their own’ states to that extent. According to the report,

Not surprisingly the three countries most ready to accept UN decisions are also permanent members of the UN Security Council: China (78%), France (68%), and the United States (60%). The public in Russia, also a member, tend to be opposed to abiding by such decisions by 44 percent to 33 percent, however.
Israel, surprisingly, is another county where there is strong support for making decisions within the United Nations. Fifty-four percent of Israelis agree that their leaders should abide by such decisions even if they disagree. This is striking given the extent to which opponents of Israel have used the United Nations as a platform for criticism of the Jewish state.
In sharp contrast, the Palestinians are the only public polled with a majority opposed to accepting such collective decisions. A large 81 percent majority of Palestinians say their government should not go along with policies they oppose. This is also striking given that Palestinian leaders have used UN resolutions as a basis for legitimating their demands for statehood.

Actually, this is probably not as striking as the authors think. Their reasoning is that is unsurprising that those countries with the most influence over the decisions they are to be bound by should support them. So surely by the same reasoning those whose ‘governments’ have no say whatsoever in the decisions that are to bind them are unlikely to support abiding by such decisions willy nilly.

A recent post on lenin’s tomb suggested that public opinion polls evidence a shift to the left in the US. Some of these results appear to support such a conclusion, provided we stipulate that the shift is a shift in opinion only. More direct and reliable indicators of an actual substantive shift, like number involved, length, militancy, and success of strikes, and attendance at demonstrations, would seem to suggest otherwise. The demonstrations commemorating the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq a few weeks ago were not inspiring, even taking into account any impact UfPJ’s refusal to participate might have had. I certainly hope to see impressive turnouts at next month’s actions commemorating 40 years of military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

A safe haven

When I heard Milton Friedman had died, I rejoiced. And then I read that he was 94 and died in the bosom of his loving family. Surely he, if anyone, deserved an earlier and more uncomfortable death? The father of the Chicago Boys and godfather of Pinochet?

And now Robert Altman is dead, at 81. Why couldn’t he have lived to 94? Then maybe we could have been spared 13 years of Friedman, quite apart from the obvious benefits of Altman sticking around until 2019?

I’m a big fan of Altman’s, although I confess I’ve never seen some of his films, like McCabe and Mrs Miller, and barely remember others, like Popeye and Gosford Park. When I use the term Altmanesque, it means more than one thing. There are the big movies with lots of characters and interlocking plots, if they’re plots, like MASH, Nashville, Short Cuts, Kansas City, Cookie’s fortune, and my personal favourites, which got pretty short shrift in the NYT obit, A wedding and Pret a porter. But then there are those amazing films with five characters and one set – Streamers and Come back to the five and dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Of course the dude also made what I think of as conventional films like The player.

According to the Times’s obituarist, Rick Lyman, Altman is responsible for these immortal words, “What is a cult?...It just means not enough people to make a minority.”

This morning I found this appeal from American Friends of Magen David Edom (Red Star of David – the Israeli Red Cross) in my intray:

“In light of the increasing missile attacks on Sderot, we call for immediate support from MDA and its supporters to help us build out emergency facilities. We need help more than ever.”

Eli Moyal, Mayor, Sderot, Israel

MDA paramedics race t the scene to care for the wounded every time a rocket strikes.

American Friends of Magen David Adom is building a new, reinforced, state-of-the-art MDA station in Sderot.

In any case, where do they get off with this amazing level of cynicism? One or two precious Israelis injured a year and pull out all the stops, state of the art facilities, paramedics rush to the scene. But a few hundred metres away, dozens are slaughtered weekly and the most they can hope for is that the beneficent occupiers’ 155mm shells miss the ambulance and the paramedics who rush to their aid. Maybe they will even condescend to open the border crossing to allow some medical supplies in for a few hours.

There used to be an old saying. They taught it to us in school. ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ Nowadays, you might prefer to say, ‘28.35g of prevention is worth 435g of cure’, or perhaps more euphoniously, ‘a gram of prevention is worth a kilo of cure.’

In this light it would benefit the poor North African immigrants cynically sent off to live in the desert adjacent to Gaza more if Magen David Adom’s American benefactors saved the money they were sending to MDA and the money they were spending for the 155mm shells, as well. Then they could not only save precious Jewish lives in Sderot, but worthless Palestinian lives in Beit Hanoun, to boot.

Monday’s NY Times is scandalised over the new UN Human Rights Council. This is the result of the touted UN ‘reform’ that was supposed to fix the discredited Human Rights Commission. Now, all of a sudden, it’s ‘a weak-kneed compromise from which the United States stood honorably apart’. Among its crimes,

The council is new, but its deliberations have already fallen into a shameful pattern. When it comes to the world’s worst and most consistent human rights violators, like China, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar and Sudan, there has been a tendency to muffle words and conclusions and shift the focus from individual and political rights to broader economic and social questions.

So, notwithstanding the expressed opinion of all those ‘members of the international community’ who have ratified the basic human rights Covenants and pay lip service to the Universal Declaration, the Times’s editorialists, in their wisdom, have decided that the UN body purported charged with enforcing those instruments has been remiss in focusing on ‘economic and social questions’, as if these were not at least as important in international human rights ‘law’, and indeed, in reality, as ‘individual and political rights’.

I squandered a significant portion of my life writing letters to governments pointing out where their actions departed from their commitments under these treaties they had signed. So I am not about to repeat the litany of individual and political rights denied the long suffering people of the US. I will, however, note in passing that when it comes to the rights that are universally regarded as most fundamental, even, presumably by the Times, the right ‘to life, liberty and security of person [that is, not to be wounded]’ (UDHR Article 3), the US is far and away the preeminent violator. We now know that just in the last three years, the US has, on demonstrably and demonstratedly false pretexts, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, perhaps as many as a million, who would otherwise be alive and kicking today. They have displaced hundreds of thousands more and nobody has even tried to estimate the number wounded, maimed, crippled, blinded, etc. The numbers imprisoned and tortured are probably well known to their captors, but they’re not saying. It makes Darfur and Western Congo look like child’s play, which of course those tragedies are not.

But when it comes to criticizing Israel for violations committed in a wartime context that includes armed attacks against its citizens and soldiers, the council seems to change personality, turning harshly critical and uninterested in broader contexts.

And, now, in case you hadn’t noticed, it turns out that Israel is at war! And here’s me thinking Israel had occupied territory by force, in clear and undeniable violation of ‘international law’, and were holding the population in siegelike conditions, also in violation of international law, while their captives lash out as best they can in a vain attempt to end the occupation, as they are entitled to under international law. Or at least that’s how I read the preamble of the UDHR, ‘…it is essential, if man [sic] is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law’.

‘Armed attacks against its citizens and soldiers’ [my emphasis]! If Israel is indeed at war, as the Times avers, then since when is an attack on a military target grounds for retaliation and collective punishment? There’s really only one explanation that will account for the Times’s, and MDA’s, concern about Israeli civilians and soldiers to the exclusion of Palestinian children, and that is racism.

To add insult to injury, quite literally, it turns out that the humanitarians who run the Zionist state are not just racist against the Palestinian Arabs whose land they covet. In the 1950s, they believed that the inferior Arab Jews who were ‘making aliyah’ in large numbers at the time were carrying parasites, specifically, the Microsporum canis and Tricophyton verrucosum fungi that cause scalp tinea. Clearly these Untermenschen made exemplary experimental subjects and were ‘treated’ not with topical fungicides, but radiation. Under the 1994 Tinea capitis law, the victims are entitled to compensation. But when they undergo questioning to determine whether they are eligible, if they should fail to remember the experience they had at the age of three or four fifty years ago accurately in every detail, they are denied compensation. In fact, even if they misinterpret their correctly remembered experience by, for example, reporting that the radiation was painful, when in reality what hurt them was having their hair torn out by the roots, that is sufficient to disqualify a claim. A safe haven indeed.

Large scale

The Jerusalem Post reported the other day

If moderate elements in the Palestinian Authority don't get stronger, the IDF must prepare for a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip, said Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday.

What we have been witnessing since June, and before, in Gaza, must therefore be something other than a large scale military operation, presumably a small scale military operation, so watch out.

Gideon Levy points out what is apparently too obvious for anyone else to notice,

Nineteen inhabitants of Beit Hanun were killed with malice aforethought… anyone who bombards residential neighborhoods with artillery can't claim he didn't mean to kill innocent inhabitants.

In an article on CounterPunch, Norman Finkelstein quotes some ‘key statements’ from Jimmy Carter’s new book on Palestine, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, among them,

The United States has used its U.N. Security Council veto more than forty times to block resolutions critical of Israel. Some of these vetoes have brought international discredit on the United States, and there is little doubt that the lack of a persistent effort to resolve the Palestinian issue is a major source of anti-American sentiment and terrorist activity throughout the Middle East and the Islamic world. (pp. 209-10)

I suppose it must be to Carter’s credit that there was only one such Security Council veto exercised during his administration, against draft resolution S/13911 on 30 April 1980. That draft, moved by Tunisia, basically reaffirmed previous UN resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw from the territories it had occupied since 1967 and so forth.

US Ambassador McHenry concluded his statement explaining the Carter regime’s objection to the draft resolution,

I know that in many quarters there is skepticism that negotiations in this [Camp David] framework can succeed. The road ahead will be difficult. But together with Israel and Egypt, we ask only that we be judged on the results we obtain.

…It is to the end - the attainment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East - that my government has committed itself. We solemnly reaffirm that commitment here today.

The United States will oppose the resolution before us. [emphasis added]

Thanks in large measure to the cynicism of Carter, his predecessors and successors, twenty-six years down the track, the results he obtained in this way are no peace and certainly no justice. But it seems he no longer wishes to be judged on that basis. At the risk of repeating myself, as the old saying goes, ‘Embarrassing a politician with accusations of hypocrisy is like embarrassing a dog with accusations that he licks his own balls.’

Israeli author David Grossman gave a speech at the Rabin memorial event on 5 November that has received a lot of comment. It was purportedly a masterpiece of Hebrew rhetorical prose, composed by a literary master. I won’t take issue with this assessment, because it is unsurprising in any case that the literary qualities are not evident in the translation.

Gilad Atzmon has already pointed out the contradiction inherent in Grossman’s ‘secular miracle’,

I am totally secular, and yet in my eyes the establishment and the very existence of the State of Israel is a miracle of sorts that happened to us as a nation - a political, national, human miracle.

Gilad also mentions his problem with Grossman’s ‘Jewish and universal values’. One of the thins that struck me about the speech was his description of Israel as

a state that holds as an integral and essential part of its Jewish identity and its Jewish ethos, the observance of full equality and respect for its non-Jewish citizens

Even if there weren’t a contradiction inherent between a state with a ‘Jewish identity’ and a ‘Jewish ethos’ somehow observing ‘full respect’ for non Jews, who do not comprise part of the state’s ‘identity’ and whose ‘ethos’ is excluded, it takes a very blinkered approach to the history of the Zionist project to miss one of its central aspects - ethnic cleansing of the non Jewish population and marginalization of those who managed to remain. Benny Morris was quite clear a couple of years ago when he characterized Ben Gurion’s failure to ‘cleanse the whole country’ as a ‘fatal mistake’. Ilan Pappe’s new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, is now out and on its way from Amazon. I understand it fleshes out this story in considerable detail, amply documented.

Gilad also makes this cogent observation about Grossman’s quite blatant racism,

The critical reader may ask oneself what really Grossman refers to when he says “people with our powers of creativity and regeneration”? It is rather simple. Grossman truly believes in the uniqueness of the chosen people. In other words, Grossman is not more than a biological determinist…I find it hard to believe that the Guardian would give a voice to a German philosopher who praises Aryan people’s ‘powers of creativity and regeneration’.

Some comments that I’ve come across let Grossman get away with,

Yitzhak Rabin took the road of peace with the Palestinians, not because he possessed great affection for them or their leaders.

It’s true that the Nobel committee awarded Rabin its coveted Peace Prize, and I’ve written elsewhere what that indicates. The point is that Grossman accepts at face value and promulgates as fact that the Oslo Accords had something to do with achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians, when it was never anything other than a stalling tactic that created the bloated and ineffectual quisling Palestine Authority while doubling the Jewish population colonizing the West Bank with a view to its ultimate annexation.

One, however, published on the Electronic Intifada on the 9^th, by Raymond Deane, certainly hasn’t missed this crucial point, or many others.

With Lieberman you know where you stand, and self-styled democrats and peaceniks can polish their humanistic credentials by flinging mud at him. With David Grossman, however, the same premises lead to a discourse in which everything has become muddied and inverted, the occupier has become the victim, the victim has become a twisted fanatic, and only the humanistic man of letters has retained any kind of wistful integrity. This discourse is understandably popular with those who, sometimes with honourable if misguided motivation, wish to believe that Zionism can be a liberal, humanistic ideology rather than one that is supremacist and racist to the core.

His ‘Anatomy of a Beautiful Soul’ pulls no punches and I recommend it highly.

On a lighter note, I recently reminded myself to check out David Pope’s website, which I have to recommend visiting more conscientiously than I seem to manage. I reckon he is consistently the most incisive political cartoonist I know of, although some of his material will be obscure to those who do not recognize Australian politicians or keep track of developments in Australian politics. An example (which will not display in this blog)

For more laughs, I found a link to the Dilbert site not long ago from Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning blog, of all places!

Does he deserve to die?

Well, probably. But we may never know for sure because he was not accorded the scrupulous safeguards that the Iraqis are entitled to in their justice system. And of course, it is not theirs, anyway. That’s just the fiction the occupation has put on the whole quisling structure they’ve established in Iraq. As if they would take anyone in but a handful of international relations academics!

In an uncharacteristically sensible opinion, considering the auspices under which it was carried out, Leandro Despouy, the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers ‘voiced “strong objections” regarding the conduct of the trial’, as reported on the UN website.

Despouy cogently observes,

The tribunal has been established during an occupation considered by many as illegal, is composed of judges who have been selected during this occupation, including non Iraqi citizens, and has been mainly financed by the United States.

…lack of observance of a legal framework that conforms to international human rights principles and standards, in particular the right to be tried by an independent and impartial tribunal which upholds the right to a defence… risks being seen as the expression of the verdict of the winners over the losers…Since its beginning one of the judges, five candidate judges, three defence lawyers and an employee of the tribunal have been killed.

Furthermore, the body had no mandate to address “the war crimes committed by foreign troops during the first Gulf war (1990), nor the war crimes committed after 1 May 2003, date of the beginning of the occupation.”

He also discouraged Saddam’s execution which would be an open contradiction to the growing international tendency to abolish capital punishment.

Perhaps more importantly, it lets Saddam’s main backers entirely off the hook, as Robert Fisk chronicled in yesterday’s CounterPunch, citing US and British supply of a range of biological and chemical agents that they were perfectly well aware were being used against the Iranian conscripts in the first Gulf War in the 1980s, as well as the Halabja massacre, which the US cynically tried to blame on Iran when Saddam was their buddy. Norman Solomon provides a list of compelling accusations specifically against US Secretary of ‘Defense’ Donald Rumsfeld.

Indeed, a really thorough investigation would have to go right back to the late Fifties and examine how the Ba’ath came to overthrow the Qassem government in the first place, and how Saddam rose to preeminence in that august institution. And it might even determine who needs to stand trial for the crimes against humanity of the UN sanctions regime, characterized by its administrators, Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, as ‘genocide’.

If Saddam doesn’t live to testify in all those trials and help bring his backers to justice, it will be, if possible, even more obvious that the principal function of this kangaroo court has been to protect the guilty.

Meanwhile, back at the UN…

Danny Gillerman, ‘Israel's ambassador to the United Nations urged the Security Council to take tough measures against "demented" Iran for its nuclear program in the wake of North Korea's declared atomic test.’

Waxing poetic, Yahoo reports, ‘"The international community should learn the lessons of what occurred in North Korea," [he] told army radio. "North Korea was only the preview. Iran will be the feature film, which, if no one takes serious action, will be projected throughout the whole world."’

Furthermore, as if their ambassador to the IAEA hadn’t just said that nuclear proliferation wasn’t an issue, ‘Israeli leaders called for the North Korean test to serve as a wake up call to the international community on the risks of nuclear proliferation and prompt a zero-tolerance policy with Tehran.’

Ignoring Juan Cole’s critique of the translation of Ahmadinejad’s one remark (not ‘repeated threats’ for crying out loud!), Yahoo concludes, ‘Israel considers Iran its arch-enemy for President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's repeated threats to wipe the Jewish state "off the map" and for his comments questioning the Holocaust.’

Well Ahmadinejad may or may not have said anything about wiping Israel off the map, but I for one hope to live to see a map free of sectarian ethnocracies like Israel and hierocracies like Iran.

Unparalleled moral standards

The Jerusalem Post reports (courtesy, as usual, of the indefatigable Tom Feeley of ICH),

The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) has called on Israel to reevaluate its military rules of war in light of Hizbullah's "unconscionable use of civilians, hospitals, ambulances, mosques and the like as human shields, cannon fodder and weapons of asymmetric warfare."

…Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the RCA, … said that …the IDF may have unnecessarily endangered its forces out of moral considerations.

"Like Jews everywhere, we as members of the RCA have always admired the unparalleled moral standards of Israel's armed forces in their military engagements, including sensitivity to the suffering of civilians and other innocents who find themselves caught up in the entanglements of war," said the RCA statement. …

According to Herring, the new combat realities of fighting an enemy that uses its own civilians as human shields dictate a rethinking of IDF military ethics.

…The RCA's delicate criticism of IDF morality was echoed by Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu of Safed and Rabbi Tzefania Drori of Kiryat Shmona. …

"Our corrupt military morality, which tells us that our soldiers must endanger their lives to protect enemy civilians, is the reason we lost the war," said Eliyahu.

"Anti-Semites demand that we use Christian morality while our enemies act like barbarians," said Drori, accusing the IDF of adopting "Christian morality" as its own.

Three weeks ago, Rabbi Dov Lior announced in the name of the Yesha Council of Rabbis that "when our enemies hold a baby in one hand and shoot at us with the other, or when missiles are purposely aimed at civilian populations in the Land of Israel in blatant disregard for moral criteria, we are obligated to act according to Jewish morality, which dictates that 'he who gets up to kill you, get up yourself and kill him first.'"

"There are no innocent parties in a time of war," he continued. "Rather, one must battle a bellicose city until it is captured. All types of Christian morality weaken the spirit of our army and our nation and cost us the lives of our soldiers and citizens."

My understanding is that there is indeed a Talmudic principle of the rodef ‘pursuer’, which sanctions preemptive actions. The unparalleled moral standards of the Israeli military, however, take this a few steps further - If you can imagine anyone threatening your interests in any way, pre-emptively obliterate them and anyone else who happens to be around at the time and might get in the way.

The principle has doubtless been subject to a millennium of interpretation and commentary. For example, an article by Rabbi Jill Jacobs asserts,

Even as rabbinic law commands the killing of the rodef, this mandate, like the laws of war and punishment, comes with restrictions. Before killing a rodef, one must be certain that this person actually intends to murder, and may even need to verify that the rodef understands the implications of this crime (Talmud, Yoma 85b and Talmud, Sanhedrin 72b). Furthermore, one must do the least harm necessary to stop the rodef from murdering. Thus, one who kills a rodef when breaking a limb would have sufficed is liable for capital punishment (Talmud, Sanhedrin 57a).

And of course, unparalleled moral standards do not prevent the Israeli military from siting its headquarters in a densely populated area of Tel Aviv, or its munitions factories and stores among civilians. And all the other atrocities we have witnessed over the last 58 years and more.

Unparalleled moral standards also apparently sanction violation of the ceasefire whose terms were so favourable to Israel, as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said after the cabinet decision to accept them, but apparently not to comply with them. As Jonathon Cook wrote a few days ago:

In fact, this was no simple “clash” during an intelligence-gathering mission, as early reports in the Israeli media made clear before the official story was established. Israeli special forces launched the covert operation to capture a Hizbullah leader, Sheikh Mohammed Yazbak, way beyond the Litani River, the northern extent of Israel’s supposed “buffer zone”. The hit squad were disguised not only as Arabs -- a regular ploy by units called “mistarvim” -- but as Lebanese soldiers driving in Lebanese army vehicles. When their cover was blown, Hizbullah opened fire, killing one Israeli and wounding two more in a fierce gun battle.

…It is difficult to see how this operation could be characterized as “defensive” except in the language employed by Israel’s army -- which, after all, is misleadingly known as the Israel Defence Forces. UN Resolution 1701, the legal basis of the ceasefire, calls on Israel to halt “all offensive military operations”. How much more offensive could the operation be?

The question keeps arising of whether the ceasefire will hold. This can only mean, ‘will Hizballah abide by the ceasefire’, because Israel has already violated the limp ‘offensive operations’ clause that was supposed to have applied to it. UNSC 1701 was arrived at through such a corrupt and cynical process without consultation with Hizballah, which everyone asserts is one of the chief protagonists, that they would be well within their rights to ignore it. And then there is the little matter of the continuing Israeli occupation, permitted, up to a point, by 1701. Why would Hizballah, or any Lebanese, accept this infringement of their sovereignty, much less tolerate thousands of yobbos armed to the teeth stomping around their communities? As for UNIFIL, under 1701, it becomes a proxy occupation force and is in principle fair game. Under 1701 or any imaginable scenario, UNIFIL could never deploy on the Israeli side of the Blue Line. Their task is to disarm the defenders and it is unthinkable that the aggressor should be disarmed. The answer of course is that any hint of defence or retaliation on Hizballah’s part would reset the clock, becoming the provocation for entirely justified Israeli ‘self defence’ that the ‘international community’ would applaud. Unparallelled moral double standards, but who’s counting?

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.

True to form

The NY Times, true to form, continues its Israeli spin. It is worth noting that this is supposed to be coverage, not an opinion piece.

Violence

Aid Crisis Worsens as Israel Pounds Southern Lebanon By JOHN KIFNER

Published: August 9, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 8 — A humanitarian crisis deepened across Lebanon on Tuesday as fighting continued to rage between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah guerrillas along the border, amid indications that Israel was preparing for a major escalation.

‘Fighting continued to rage’ alright, but the humanitarian crisis arises from the bombing and shelling the Israelis are inflicting much more than from the ‘fighting’ on the ground. It might be worth mentioning, if the article aimed to be honest, that Israel’s carpet bombing of southern Lebanon and explicit declaration of a fee fire zone south of the Litani are a serious violation of the laws of war. There can no longer be any doubt that Israel is either deliberately targeting civilians, or is so grossly and consistently incompetent in aiming their precision guided ordnance as to amount to the same thing.

In Tyre, the besieged major city in the south, leaflets fluttered down warning that any car on the roads south of the Litani River could be hit.

“Every vehicle, whatever its nature, which travels south of the Litani will be bombed on suspicion of transporting rockets and arms for the terrorists,” said the leaflets, addressed to the people of Lebanon and signed “State of Israel.”

You’d think that honesty would require the Times to mention at this point how Tyre came to be besieged and that a warning of this kind doesn’t relieve the perpetrator of responsibility. Nasrullah has warned residents of northern Israel that they are in danger from falling Katyushas. But that hasn’t removed the opprobrium for firing them.

The United Nations, as well as the Red Cross and other aid groups, said they were unable to move convoys to the villages around Tyre to deliver supplies or even dig out bodies buried under rubble.

‘Unable to move convoys’? Why would that be? Could be out of petrol, of course, since there’s little left in besieged Lebanon. But actually, it’s because Israel has decreed everything that moves a legitimate target. Some people think that humanitarian aid is protected and that combatants are required to facilitate its passage. Unless it’s Israel.

In Israel, where public and political pressure is mounting over the stalled campaign, after four weeks of conflict, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said he had ordered contingency plans for a bigger ground offensive when the Security Cabinet meets on Wednesday to consider widening the war.

“I have instructed all the I.D.F. commanders to prepare for an operation aimed at taking over launching areas and reduce as much as possible Hezbollah’s rocket launching capability,” he said, using the initials for the Israeli Defense Forces.

“If we see that the diplomatic efforts do not yield the results we expect, we will have to do it ourselves,’’ he added, referring to efforts at the United Nations, led by the United States and France, for a cease-fire resolution.

The only effort the US is putting in at the UN is precisely to preclude a ceasefire.

But with both combatants locked in what each sees as a struggle for survival, it seemed unlikely that a Security Council resolution would have any immediate effect.

Israel has enunciated its desire to wipe out Hizb’allah. Hizb’allah says it wants Israel to release prisoners. But each sees the conflict ‘as a struggle for survival’. So they each have equally pressing and legitimate grounds for continuing to fight. Hizb’allah may or may not have crossed the Blue Line to capture the Israeli POWs, but it doesn’t actually matter, as that kind of violation of territorial integrity has been occurring in both directions since Hizb’allah routed the Israeli occupation in 2000. It is Israeli that has actually invaded in force and is currently occupying territory, which makes most, if not all, Hizb’allah attacks legitimate defense and all Israeli attacks offensive. But Israel ‘sees’ it as a struggle for survival, so they can do as they please.

The last I heard, France’s position was that it would lead an international force once there was a ceasefire and a political settlement in place. Israel, as reported below, ‘would leave only on the arrival of an international force’. Sounds like an impasse to me.

In New York on Tuesday, an Arab League delegation told members of the Security Council that the draft resolution to halt hostilities would only worsen the crisis, because it did not demand an immediate Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

An immediate Israeli withdrawal. What an unreasonable demand! Fancy suggesting that the aggressor withdraw as part of a peace plan!

“What is happening will sow the seeds of hatred and extremism in the area, and provide a pretext for those who feel that the international community is taking sides,’’ said Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, the foreign minister of Qatar.

I confess that I have not mastered the intricacies of Diplomese, but when the ‘international community’ demands, in the words of the draft resolution, ‘the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations’[emphasis added], when all Israeli operations are by definition defensive, why would ‘those who feel that the international community is taking sides’ require a pretext? one side, the defenders, disarm.

Why would we need a pretext when the international community further calls for ’ the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Lebanese armed and security forces and of UN mandated international forces deployed in this area’, but not for the disarmament of an equivalent area south of the Blue Line?

Why would we need a pretext when the international community ‘require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state’, whose armed forces have shown themselves perfectly capable of resisting bombardment and invasion. If the international community were not taking sides, wouldn’t they demand, at least, disarmament of the aggressor?

As for the seeds of hatred and extremism, weren’t they sown when the Zionists decided they needed to have a Jewish majority in Palestine for their racist ethnocracy and accordingly ethnically cleansed the area in 1948?

A senior Bush administration official said he did not see Israel agreeing to a resolution that would call for an immediate withdrawal. Under the current draft, they would leave only on the arrival of an international force, which would be created by a second resolution that would also address political dimensions of the problems, including the disarming of Hezbollah.

In 1991, the international community, which never wants to be seen taking sides, called for the immediate withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Iraq didn’t agree, but that didn’t stop the Security Council from taking decisions, and taking sides.

But the official, requesting anonymity to discuss administration strategy, said the United States saw a plan announced Monday by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon, which would send 15,000 Lebanese troops to the south, as something that could be written into the resolution to win Arab support.

Winning Arab support is important; not interfering with Israeli military and geopolitical objectives is much more important; saving Lebanese lives is irrelevant

“If the way this ends is deployment of the Lebanese armed forces to the blue line,” he said, referring to the Israeli border, “that would mean that the government of Lebanon was the one who would work with the Israelis to withdraw. It’s one piece of the puzzle that would help to stabilize Lebanon.”

As if! Obviously Israel needs the help of the Lebanese government to withdraw. They couldn’t turn their tanks around and just drive away without somebody’s help, after all. And a stable Lebanon is the whole objective, that’s why the international community has stood by and watched as Israeli aggression forced over 25% of Lebanon’s alleged population from their homes, the most effective stabilizing strategy known to humankind.

Below this, moreover, there is another text. What the Times and its anonymous official source mean by stability is a state of affairs where the Lebanese ruling class, in cahoots with ‘western’ interests, can continue to exploit and oppress the huge majority of ordinary Lebanese unhindered.

There are a couple of things we have Israel to thank for. They have succeeded in uniting the Lebanese across the ‘sectarian divisions’ that have traditionally plagued the country. 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?

Meanwhile, in an unusual move Israeli observers suggested was a prelude to heavy combat, the Israeli military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz of the air force, named his deputy, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, as his personal representative to supervise the fighting in Lebanon. The bypassing of the Israeli ground commander, Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, led Israeli television news Tuesday night, with a Channel One reporter, Yoav Limor, saying “the failure is that of the army.” He described General Kaplinsky as “a winning officer” who was sent north to deliver victory.

In the fighting Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike killed 13 people in the Shiite village of Al Ghaziye. Other airstrikes hit the south — about 40 raids in a score of locations — and transportation routes to the east in the mostly Shiite Bekaa Valley.

The Israeli military said three soldiers were killed and eight wounded in the ground fighting on Tuesday. Much of the fighting was centered around Bint Jbail, which was a Hezbollah stronghold a few miles north of the border. Illustrating the tenacity of the fighting, it is an area Israel said it seized weeks ago.

In Beirut, explosions sounded Tuesday night in the heavily Shiite slum districts on the city’s southern edge. Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets into northern Israel, injuring several people.

‘Explosions sounded’, but no harm done, and of course nobody was responsible, and even if they were, they didn’t mean any harm. But the 150 Hizb’allah rockets…now someone was responsible for firing them, and actual ‘people’ were injured, not Lebanese, not Shi’i, not Hizb’allah supporters, who are all fair game.

[An Israeli strike on a Palestinian refugee camp, Ain el Hilwe, in south Lebanon killed at least one person, medics said early Wednesday, according to Reuters.]

With all of the major highways now cut and with a naval blockade off the coast, gasoline and fuel for generating electricity were running short. With rationing, there is enough fuel for five more days of electricity, a Lebanese government official estimated Tuesday, putting hospitals, already overwhelmed with the wounded, in particular peril.

It sounds like a natural disaster. Again, roads are cut, and there’s even a naval blockade. I wonder how that could have happened.

International aid workers said the situation was particularly dire throughout the south, because convoys could not reach Tyre, nor venture from there to the outlying villages.

This is exactly the kind of verbiage found in reports after last October’s earthquake in Kashmir.

“South of the Litani is off,” said Khaled Mansour, the chief United Nations spokesman in Lebanon, indicating that the agency’s aid convoys had been halted because the last bridge over the Litani River north of Tyre had been blown up.

The United Nations World Food Program has stopped deliveries of food to southern villages because of the danger on the roads, said a spokeswoman, Christiane Berthiaume.

The World Health Organization warned that if fuel is not delivered soon, 60 percent of the hospitals in Lebanon will “simply cease to function.”

More disaster coverage. There’s danger on the roads, but no cause for the danger. The last bridge ‘had been blown up’. The passive voice is so useful when your objective is not to identify the agent.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Jad Mouawad from Beirut, Warren Hoge from the United Nations, Sabrina Tavernise from Tyre, Lebanon, and Greg Myre from Jerusalem.

Obviously, it takes five journalists to construct a cover up like this. They are all complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity. But then, as China Mieville wrote recently, ‘International law has always been complicit with imperialism.’