I have a confession

I have a confession to make: I don’t know enough about Darfur.

From what I’ve read, however, it seems clear that all those killing and being killed are both black and Muslim. It also seems patently obvious that the heart of the issue is access to resources.

A year or so ago, when the Times brought in Times select, it was such a relief not to have to read Friedman and Dowd and Kristof anymore. But someone forwarded me the sage Nicholas D Kristof’s article in yesterday’s NY Times where he writes that ‘gunmen on the Sudanese payroll heave babies into bonfires as they shout epithets against blacks’ and ‘Arab leaders need to show that they care about Muslim children being shot’. Clearly, Kristof thinks the gunmen and baby slaughterers are white Christians, Jews, and Hindus, and who would know better than him?

In his op-ed, he suggests an eight point plan for what ‘we’ can do to alleviate the crisis. Not one of those eight points involves providing food, water, medicines, doctors, nurses, or any of the other things that might help to alleviate both the suffering and the underlying causes of the conflict.

He goes on to lament:

After fewer than 10,000 white people had died in Kosovo, the U.S. intervened to prevent a genocide.

Wait a second…that wasn’t the US that bombed Serbia, was it? They said it was NATO – a completely different kettle of fish. And the widespread killings and displacement of the ethnic Albanian Kosovars occurred after the NATO bombing campaign started. Just as everyone expected it would. And the motivation for the bombing? Was that to prevent genocide? Well, my understanding was that Serbia had agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and provide for Kosovar autonomy in accordance with the Rambouillet Accords, until the notorious Appendix B was inserted at the last minute. The provisions of this Appendix effectively provided for a NATO occupation of Serbia. The terms, as I recall, were much more stringent than the terms on which Serbia eventually surrendered after ten weeks of bombing, including, for example

NATO personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from the Parties' jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal, or disciplinary offenses which may be committed by them in the FRY.

I thought that Tory Blain and many others had made it plain that the objective of the bombing was precisely to restore the credibility of NATO in the post Cold War world on its fiftieth anniversary (see this article by Steven Shalom, and this one by Brendan Stone, and this one by Chomsky).

following the "promise" that "we would not tolerate the brutal suppression of the civilian population," to walk away now would not merely destroy NATO’s credibility, more importantly it would be a breach of faith with thousands of innocent civilians, whose only desire is to live in peace and who took us at our word. (HC Deb 23 March 1999, c161)

On 19 March 1999, President Clinton said,

This is a conflict with no natural boundaries. It threatens our national interests. If it continues, it will push refugees across borders, and draw in neighboring countries. It will undermine the credibility of NATO, on which stability in Europe and our own credibility depend.

US National Security Advisor Samuel Berger told Jim Lehrer on 23 February 1999,

…there really is a question of NATO's credibility here. NATO has been the alliance, the transatlantic alliance which has kept us at peace for the last 50 years, hopefully for the next 50 years. NATO has an investment here in trying to use its strength to implement a peace if we can reach it.

As David Fromkin wrote in the Prologue of his 1999 book Kosovo Crossing: American Ideals Meet Reality on the Balkan Battlefields as reprinted in the NY Times:

In the former Yugoslavia, NATO found that it had lost its credibility. No longer could it deter the other side. Put another way, the Serbs refused to fold in March 1999, so NATO was obliged to play out the hand. Now that it has done so, perhaps its credibility will be restored.

It frequently has been said, and perhaps with reason, that the future of NATO, and of American global leadership, were at stake on the battlefield of Kosovo.

As Fromkin has come up again, one of the people [formerly] on this list was quite angry at how I had treated him and wrote to ask to be removed. I was very grateful to receive her email rather than just get reported as spam! And of course it left an opening to engage with her criticisms.

Anyway, she reckons:

It's always unwise to trash the work of someone you haven't read. In that volume, Fromkin produces the most detailed diplomatic history of the Sykes-Picot agreement that I've seen in one place, as well as its interplay with Zionism and its betrayal of promises to the Arabs. (Chapter 41 is titled "Betrayal".) His history is utterly damning of British and French colonialism as well as illuminating of the role of the oil companies. He also offers a detailed history of what happened to Turkey, and Syria. It's a great piece of scholarship and pulls no punches. In short, he covers everything you think he should cover.

Finally, saying that Fromkin is "completely subservient to power" is simple nonsense. It's glib and silly to denounce, especially in such sneering tones, a historian you haven't read and who, demonstrably, knows vastly more than you do.

To which I responded, in part,

Fromkin would not be much of a scholar if he didn't know vastly more about his specialty than some grunt like me. But that does not raise him above criticism and I reject your apparent suggestion that I can't criticize what he has written for publication to a mass audience in the NY Times without familiarising myself with his complete opus. I don't think it would be too much of an exaggeration to say that very few of those reading his op-ed would have already read 'A Peace to End All Peace' - it has to stand on its own.

My blog is not intended as scholarship and I am not a scholar. I am just someone with a low tolerance for bullshit and an inclination to write about what I read. Whatever merits Fromkin's academic work may possess, and indeed whatever actual information he conveys in the op-ed - and there is some - it is contained in a matrix of assumptions that coincide with the received wisdom that underlies a significant element of the propaganda system. Whether deliberate or not, this is precisely an example of an intellectual at the service of power.

I was relieved when she replied, as I hadn’t really set out to alienate her. She reiterated her view,

But it is incumbant on critics at least to have a look at the major work of that author before assuming basic things about his/her politics and, implicitly, character. It's very unhelpful to slash and burn and deride wonderful scholars who have contributed in major ways to our understanding of what happened, based solely on a sour reading of some quick public essay in which they didn't say precisely the right thing in your view, or cover precisely the right ground.

…We have to support and promote the great scholars who have helped expose the frauds and lies, not discredit and deride them. Everybody should read Fromkin. For those who are concerned about the Middle East, it's a page-turner.

I have now replied, in part,

I think the issue is that the author has to take responsibility for what they write. In my view, if anything, what you write for a general audience is more important than what you write for a specialized or academic audience. My critique of Fromkin's NYT op-ed does not require that I know anything about his other work, although if he had not been presented as an expert, I probably would have been slightly less unsympathetic to the lapses in the NYT piece.

… I hope you will agree, for example, that 'The Arabic-speaking Muslim world had been taken in hand by Britain and France after the First World War' is a curious way of talking about the Sykes-Picot Treaty. I can only read 'taken in hand' as beneficent, with a strong component of paternalism, at best. Or that writing 'the third world remained unconvinced' suggests that harbouring such suspicions was groundless, when it plainly was anything but.

If I had read Fromkin's book and felt as you do about it, I would definitely want to promote it. But that doesn't give him carte blanche and my support would only go that far. As I said last time, his NYT piece has to stand on its own and he has to take responsibility for it, although, if truth be told, I don’t know how much the editors tampered with it, but I doubt they actually changed the substance. On reviewing what I wrote, I might have gone a little lighter on the sarcasm, but don't perceive anything unfair. You see, what I think is unhelpful is for those who have established themselves as authorities to purvey stuff to a mass audience that, for example, glosses over British, French, and US imperialist designs, as this piece appears to.

On the strength of her recommendation, by the way, I have added Fromkin’s book on the Middle East (but not the one on Kosovo!) to my Amazon basket.

Fromkin concludes the prologue to his Kosovo book by enjoining reconsideration of

the questions that have arisen so often in the years following the end of the Cold War, and that are likely to recur in the twenty-first century: when, why, and how should the United States send its troops overseas in an attempt to resolve conflicts if they do not threaten the nation's physical security?

I find it hard to stomach some of the implicit assumptions evident in this question:

· There are situations where the US should send troops overseas.

· The US attempts to resolve conflicts.

· It is possible for US troops to resolve conflicts.

But he goes on to conclude, somewhat ambiguously, in my view,

… The Kosovo war raises the question of the extent to which America, in the world outside its borders, has the power to do good — or even whether it knows with any certainty what "good" is.

The central issue, however, is the way he writes of America, fully buying into the myth of the nation – that there is some entity called ‘America’ that has interests other than those of its rulers. That there are just ‘Americans’ who can come under collective threat, rather than one group who determines what to call a threat, ‘al Qa’ida’ for example, and what not to call a threat, NAFTA, for example, and another group that cops the consequences, whether it means losing their jobs, or killing and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq. What ‘good’, I can hardly help asking, has the US government, because that’s clearly what he means by ‘America’, done for ordinary people within its own borders? A clean environment? Health care? A decent standard of living? Even protection from terrorists? Even on their own stated terms?...

And outside its borders? Well, the US blocked a ceasefire in Lebanon for over a month. And slaughtered some 655,000 in Iraq. Fromkin wrote that in 1999, before W was elected, so he couldn’t have anticipated the absolute certainty of this administration in prosecuting good and suppressing the axis of evil.

I’m not that sure that certainty is the issue. The US has a very long and consistent history of wreaking havoc wherever it goes, from Nicaragua to Haiti, to Brazil to the Dominican Republic, to Vietnam and all over Southeast Asia, back to Nicaragua, to El Salvador, to Guatemala, to Grenada to Panama, to Iraq, back to Haiti, to Somalia, to Serbia and back to Iraq and, as George Shrub would say, Cubaragua to East Nicador and many more, always doing good.

I remain hopeful that Fromkin’s more scholarly contribution will not betray the kind of silliness I’ve observed in what he writes for us plebs.

'Send the Marines' and other laughs; email account disabled

A few days ago, I posted a blog entry entitled ‘Democrats’ 'values and deepest principles'’. A reader wrote back reminding me of the lyrics to an old Tom Lehrer classic:

When someone makes a move

Of which we don't approve,

Who is it that always intervenes?

U.N. and O.A.S.,*

They have their place, I guess,

But first - send the Marines!

We'll send them all we've got,

John Wayne and Randolph Scott;

Remember those exciting fighting scenes?

To the shores of Tripoli,

But not to Mississippoli,

What do we do? We send the Marines!

For might makes right,

And till they've seen the light,

They've got to be protected,

All their rights respected,

Till somebody we like can be elected.

Members of the corps

All hate the thought of war;

They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means.

Stop calling it aggression,

Ooh, we hate that expression!

We only want the world to know

That we support the status quo.

They love us everywhere we go,

So when in doubt,

Send the Marines!

This reminded me of one of my other favourite satirical songwriters, not as well known as Tom Lehrer, Dave Lippman. So I googled him and found his website, and sent the reader the lyrics to one of Dave’s appropriate tunes from his ‘Shoot from the Lipp’ album, which I repeat part of here for your delectation:

SUBMARINE CORPS HYMN

(Home on the Range)

Oh give me a gun where the terrorists run

The government, just as we say

Where seldom is heard a disparaging word

And the lies are spoke loudly all day

(Marine Corps Hymn)

From Peoria to Pretoria we'll defend the master race

We will fight our dirty little wars even out in outer space

First to fight for right, then farther right

Keeping U.S. interests safe

We are proud to claim the title of United Bomb and Strafe

(My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean)

The Pershing flies over the ocean

The Trident sails under the sea

Cruise Missiles fly over the Urals

To make the world safer

For me

God bless free enterprise, system divine

Stand beside her and guide her

Just as long as the profits are mine

After I’d spent a couple of hours reading lyrics and listening to MP3s and laughing myself silly, I wrote to him to ask whatever happened to a song I remembered - a long rap that chronicled the history of the Contragate gang right back to their origins in the 1950s. Dave wrote straight back, reminding me of the album – ‘Shrub in ‘88’ – which only ever came out on cassette. Remember cassettes? Anyway, I suggested putting the lyrics up on his site and he has now done so. It’s much too long to put here, but I really recommend anyone reading this make a point of visiting his site, ordering his cds (He’s about to reissue ‘Shrub in ‘88’ on cd), and checking his tour schedule. He may be playing someplace near you (NYC this Saturday)! Anyhow, here’s a sample:

It may have been illegal but it wasn't wrong

Lemme tell ya, life's a beast

When you're caught between Iraq and a country

Of strategic importance in the Middle East

Not much has changed.

On a more sombre note, I got an automated email a couple of days ago that seemed to suggest that someone on this list had reported the blog as spam. It may have been a coincidence, but the next morning, the email I send it from was disabled. I’ve had a read through some of the pertinent entries on the google discussion board and it seems that this happens quite a lot. Many of those who’ve had their Gmail accounts disabled can’t even speculate as to the reason. You can report it and send emails to Gmail support to your heart’s content, but from what I read, there is no possibility of ever receiving a response or explanation from a human being. I think it is possible that accounts are sometimes reenabled, but this appears to be entirely unpredictable and ad hoc. I am certainly not expecting it. Nor do I expect ever to find out whether there was a connection between the two incidents. I have accordingly established a Yahoo address with a similar name.

What emerges from this is,

1. if you don’t like my blog, please just reply to any email from me asking to be removed and that will be your last one. Reporting it as spam is a particularly cruel and vicious approach and creates a lot of unnecessary busywork finding workarounds.

2. if you are using Gmail on the web, as opposed to via an email client like Outlook, then bear in mind that you are using the beta version, so glitches are to be expected, and there is this other little problem of having your account disabled without warning. That means that you will lose all your saved email and contacts and whatever else you use the site for. So I strongly recommend either starting to use a client program or taking some other step to download and archive your valuable email and other data. You might also consider establishing an alternative email account on Yahoo or somewhere, if you don’t have one already. As far as I can tell, if you want to access your webmail through Outlook or the like, Hotmail’s free service no longer supports this at all. I don’t believe free @yahoo.com (i.e. US) addresses have ever done so. Free yahoo accounts of other nationalities, e.g. @yahoo.com.au or @yahoo.ca, will allow access via a client if you sign up for ‘Yahoo delivers’. If you tick ‘yes’ on top of the yahoo delivers sign up screen, which is compulsory, then the box that says only send me adverts about the ticked stuff, and then don’t tick anything else, that should keep spam to a minimum.

Those pesky natives!

‘David Fromkin, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, is the author of “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East.”’

As if setting out to prove Chomsky’s assertion that intellectuals are completely subservient to power, he published an op-ed entitled ‘Stuck in the Canal’ in yesterday’s Times.

The article purports to be a dispassionate look at the ‘Suez crisis’ in anticipation of its fiftieth anniversary today, coincidentally, Turkish Republic Day.

…the United States was engaged in an effort to hold the line against Russia…

The Middle East was essential to this policy of containment. The Arabic-speaking Muslim world had been taken in hand by Britain and France after the First World War, and though they had since achieved independence, the countries of the Middle East remained predominantly Western-influenced. European and American oil companies played an important role in Middle Eastern affairs. Britain retained a presence at the strategically vital Suez Canal in the form of a major military base and a garrison of more than 80,000 men.

The esteemed professor surely understands that the nonsensical expression ‘the United States was engaged in an effort to hold the line against Russia’ will raise few eyebrows among Times readers. We all know that it was the responsibility of America, ‘the leader of the free world’ to ‘hold the line’ against ‘Soviet aggression’. And yet, since 1924, when Stalin took control of Russia, with his profoundly antiMarxist doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’, fomenting workers’ revolutions was completely off the Soviet agenda. After WWII, Russia was very much on the defensive. It is not absolutely obvious who was holding what lines against whose aggression. In this context, the kind of Soviet aggression Professor Fromkin intends is the threat that the Greek anti fascist resistance might take power, and the successful attempts by the US and Britain to make sure that resurrected fascists regained control.

‘The Middle East was essential to this policy of containment’ because they were sitting on ‘our oil’. That might be why the beneficent British and French had done the poor deluded natives the favour of ‘taking them in hand’ after graciously freeing them from the Ottoman Sultan’s yoke. Funny that a Professor of History and author of a book on the fall of the Ottoman Empire can’t be bothered mentioning Sykes or Picot and the underhanded sellout of the Arabs, the Kurds, and anyone else they could think to betray. It was all the Turks could do to hang on to Anatolia and a little piece of Thrace, after fighting for five more years.

It is nice of the Prof to collocate ‘European and American oil companies played an important role in Middle Eastern affairs’ with ‘the countries of the Middle East remained predominantly Western-influenced.’ Obviously he wouldn’t want to prejudice our own conclusions by actually pointing out the nature of that ‘important role’. And that insignificant British ‘presence’ was sufficient to station a soldier every two metres along the 163km long canal.

The professor feels no need to clarify why it might be that, ‘As early as 1952, the C.I.A. was searching for an Arab leader to support, someone who would make hard, unpopular decisions.’ Must be their commitment to democracy that leads them to want to support a ‘leader’ ready to sell out the popular aspirations of the led.

‘Eisenhower and Dulles believed that by their actions at Suez they were showing the nonaligned nations that, unlike the British and French, Americans were not imperialists — but the third world remained unconvinced.’ Those pesky ungrateful natives. They never appreciate what the white folks do for them. They probably thought the US had some nefarious reason for overthrowing the elected government of Mossadegh and installing that nice Shah in Iran just three years earlier, or the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954.

‘And in Europe, skeptics claimed the episode showed that the Americans intended to steal the empires of Britain and France.’ Now why would they think a thing like that? After all, it had already been over half a century since the US stole the Spanish Empire. On the leftwrites site, Robert Bollard recently reminded us of the origins of ‘the white man’s burden’, quoting from Kipling’s poem and an apropos anti-imperialist quote from Mark Twain.

Some say Kipling’s poem, apparently enjoining the US to accept the traditional ‘responsibility’ of the colonists of myth for the welfare of the colonized ‘sullen peoples’, was in reality intended as satirical. It begins:

Take up the White Man’s burden–

Send forth the best ye breed–

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need;

To wait in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild–

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.

Professor Fromkin may not be strictly accurate in writing ‘Within years of the Suez crisis, Britain and France began decolonization programs in which they released territories they had held around the world. The winds of change had begun to blow — and they had come from Suez.’ I seem to recall, however, that the Algerians and Vietnamese had quite a time persuading the French to leave, and the Tahitians, Marquesans, Martiniquains, and others still haven’t managed it.

And, as I wrote in response to Robert’s post,

It is also worth remembering that it’s not over yet. Some of the trophies acquired during the Spanish-American War, unlike the Philippines and Cuba, have remained US colonial possessions to this day. The most significant among these are Puerto Rico and Guam. Eastern (American) Samoa, another US colony, was acquired from Germany at the same time, in 1899. Although Hawai’i, annexed in 1898, was ‘granted statehood’ in 1959, and its people can therefore vote in US elections, it still looks very much like a colonial possession. By 1959, of course, the indigenous Hawai’ians were a small minority.

Although it doesn’t get as much attention as its French counterpart, the US colonial empire is actually much larger, both in area and population.

‘Israel compromised itself through its partnership with European imperialism — providing evidence to enemies who had asserted all along that Israel was no more than a European imperialist itself.’ It’s odd that Professor Fromkin can describe Theodore Herzl as among Israel’s enemies – some call him the founder of Zionism, with his 1896 pamphlet The Jewish state, where he writes, ‘If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.’

‘And its victory in the Sinai campaign — one of many dazzling triumphs — illustrated the paradox that the more Israel won on the battlefield, the further it got from achieving the peace that it sought.’ A curious paradox that the regional bully, after a long campaign of ethnic cleansing, consistently winning ‘dazzling triumphs’ against its neighbours fails to achieve peace. And obviously peace is precisely the objective of all the wars.

In this connection, it is worth remembering, although far be it from the Professor of History to remind us, that today also marks the massacre of 47 helpless ‘Israeli Arab’ civilians lined up against a wall at Kafr Qasem and shot for the crime of returning home after the curfew was declared and nobody had bothered to tell them about. Fortunately, another historian, Tom Segev, writing in Ha’aretz, has not forgotten this irrelevant detail.

A spokeswoman at the Education Ministry quoted Minister Yuli Tamir: "The massacre and the subsequent trial became a foundation stone in Israeli society's national consciousness and imprinted upon generations of commanders and soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces the moral boundary by which to act." In other words, we've learned the lesson. How nice.

How nice, indeed! It’s a relief to know that the IDF has known the moral boundary since 1956 and cleaves to its fabled purity of arms, never, ever hurting anyone who doesn’t deserve it.

On a happier note, ‘On Oct. 29, 1929, stock prices collapsed on the New York Stock Exchange amid panic selling. Thousands of investors were wiped out.’ Happy Wall Street Crash Day – here’s to many more!

Welcome to Earth!

Today’s NY Times editorializes:

Badly weakened by criticism of his conduct of this summer’s inconclusive war in Lebanon, Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has chosen to make an unwise and damaging trade-off. Bringing the pro-settler Israel Beiteinu party into his governing coalition reinforces his vulnerable parliamentary majority. But it makes it virtually impossible for Mr. Olmert to carry out the partial West Bank withdrawal program he ran on just seven months ago.

Well, the Times may consider it inconclusive, but others have managed to draw some conclusions – that Israel failed to achieve so much as one of its stated goals, that it succeeded in devastating Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, that it enhanced Hizb’allah’s prestige throughout Lebaonon’s ethnic communities, and that it drove a wedge between the ‘moderate’ totalitarian regimes favoured by Washington and the people they oppress – the ‘Arab street’.

But what’s all this about a trade-off? After all,

Israel Beiteinu is the political vehicle of Avigdor Lieberman, who advocates annexing West Bank settlements and reassigning Arab Israeli citizens to a rump Palestinian state.

exactly Olmert’s ‘convergence plan’.

Meanwhile, the nasty terrorist extremist Hamas

refuses to take the most minimal steps required for diplomatic credibility — a clear rejection of terrorism, acceptance of prior agreements and acknowledgment of Israel’s legitimacy.

Unlike the kind and gentle and eminently diplomatically credible Israeli government, which has fully embraced nonviolence, implemented every agreement in both letter and spirit, and has gone to such lengths to acknowledge Hamas’s legitimacy.

It makes you wonder where they dig up these editorial writers who seldom seem to be able to follow their own argument from one end of a sentence to the other.

Spot the loonie

October 22, 2006 9:16 AM #

Tags:

Spot the loonie

‘You imposed a group of terrorists ... on the region…It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals... This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow…. Today, with the grace of God, the efforts to establish this fake regime have failed totally.’ Ahmadinejad, as reported in Ha’aretz.

‘Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime… this is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom… The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.’ George W Bush

Ha’aretz, in the same article, after reiterating the discredited ‘face of the map’ remark, reports ‘Iran is accused of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.’ Accused of seeking to develop – now that’s something that demands that tens of millions of Iranians must suffer.

And while on the topic of loonies, check out who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Alex Cockburn writes:

As the economist Robert Pollin put it pithily when I asked him what he thought of the award to Younus , "Bangladesh and Bolivia are two countries widely recognized for having the most successful micro credit programs in the world. They also remain two of the poorest countries in the world."…

P. Sainath, author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought and India's most outstanding journalist on rural destitution and the consequences of economic policy,…points out that …"They are paying between 24 and 36 per cent on loans for productive expenditures while an upper class person can finance the purchase of a Mercedes at 6 to 8 per cent from the banking system."

The average loan of the Grameen bank is $130 in Bangladesh, lower in India. Now, the basic problem of the poor in both countries is landlessness, lack of assets. In the Indian province of Andhra Pradesh, where there are thousands of microloan groups, land costs 100,000 rupees an acre, poor land maybe 60,000 rupees--over $2000. $130 doesn't buy you the ranch, not even a good cow or buffalo.

If capitalism could solve the problems it creates, it would have done so by now, wouldn’t it?

As for the Nobel Peace Prize, in case some have forgotten, here is a partial list of some of those so honoured for their contribution to world peace: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Henry A. Kissinger, Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat, Menachem Begin, Elie Wiesel, Óscar Arias Sánchez, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, Frederik Willem de Klerk, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, The United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter.

Peace now, but first…

Private property rights!

Ha’aretz reports that, ‘according to a survey by the Peace Now settlement monitoring team’, 74% ‘of the 102 outposts in the West Bank…are at least partly built on private Palestinian land’.

‘Dror Etkes, the head of the monitoring team…called construction on these lands "highway robbery."’

And here’s me thinking the issue is that all of every ‘outpost’, ‘settlement’, ‘Jewish neighbourhood’, kibbutz, moshav, city, and, yes, highway, throughout historic Palestine, including ‘Israel proper’, was built on stolen Palestinian land.

‘"The removal of the outposts, and punishment of the people responsible for their construction, will bring Israel somewhat closer to the level of a country in which the rule of law prevails," Etkes said.’

And justice can wait.

Speaking of justice, I’m just reading Jonathan Cook’s Blood and religion: the unmasking of the Jewish and democratic state. Pretty compelling stuff. Those ‘Israeli Arabs are incredibly patient and forgiving people. Just reading about what they put up with makes me see red. But ultimately, just more evidence that Zionism is racist and Zionists are not embarrassed about being racists – it’s in a good cause, after all.

OK, what about ‘the veil’?

OK, what about ‘the veil’?

British poodle, Tory Blain and prominent ‘Labour’ ex foreign minister, Jack Straw, have made headlines lately with their remarks about veiled women. Straw claims the veil is a ‘visible statement of separation and difference’. Well, duh. Straw’s views on the kilt were, curiously, unreported.

Yesterday Al Jazeera reported a West Yorkshire teacher who lost her discrimination case when she was suspended for refusing to remove her veil. The report doesn’t mention what she was teaching. As I point out later, in my view, it makes a difference, although not to whether it is discrimination or not.

It wouldn’t surprise me if there were schools in England, even within the Kirklees council’s jurisdiction, including Headfield Church of England Junior School in Dewsbury itself, that actually require girls and boys, even male and female teachers, to dress visibly differently. Well might anyone wonder why they are promoting such separation and difference.

If the objective is to promote secularism, it is entirely counterproductive to exclude veiled women, or anyone practicing what they believe their religion requires of them, from secular institutions, as they did in France last year. Even if this were not intuitively obvious, Turkey has banned the veil for 80 years and look where it’s got them. Aishah Azmi’s case in Dewsbury, though, is irrelevant to this issue – after all, what would a Church of England school have to do with promoting secularism?

According to the veiled women I have asked about it, their motivation for ‘dressing modestly’ is to avoid arousing male lust. This is the case whether or not they cover their hair, or their faces. They all think they are dressing modestly. It hardly seems to make any sense at all, however, given the avowed purpose, to cover everything else but to leave their sexy eyes exposed. But then, if religious beliefs made any sense, they wouldn’t be religious beliefs, now would they? Ironically, those wearing a full burqa actually accomplish what they claim to set out to do.

There may in fact be a correlation between the amount of skin a society considers it acceptable for women to expose and some measure of women’s rights or equality. But even if such a correlation exists, it is not evidence of a cause and effect relation, much less which is the cause and which the effect. It is a big mistake to think that a miniskirt is either a sign of liberation or a strategy to achieve it.

If a veiled woman wants to work as a dentist, a bricklayer, an engineer, a chef, or what have you, this is entirely unobjectionable. I do have a concern, however, about a language teacher who will not allow students to observe what they do with their vocal apparatus. Don’t laugh. I had a veiled woman in one of my classes studying to be an English teacher.

Addendum: In a big surprise, today's NYT had an op-ed by one Paul Cruickshank, arguing that criticizing veiled women was counterproductive!

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.

You learn something new every day

It never occurred to me that a state that is not party to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty could manage to get a seat on the IAEA. The Israeli ‘Ambassador’ to the IAEA, Israel Michaeli, in his profound wisdom, is reported to have opined, "The fundamental goal in the Middle East, as in other regions, is obtaining regional peace, security and stability, not arms control per se." This is doubtless why Israel is threatening Iran. Nothing to do with concerns about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons development at all. What’s most likely to secure regional peace, security, and stability is undoubtedly a continuing military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and utterly destroying neighbouring countries. Oh, and two or three hundred nukes, of course.

Needless to say, the IAEA did not resolve that Israel’s nuclear program was a threat.

600,000 die for oil

I was wondering when we’d get the update, and there it was in this morning’s Times. The new estimate, allegedly carried out by ‘researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’ based on a survey of ‘1,849 Iraqi families’, comes to 601,023 violent deaths since the US invasion, with a margin of error of about 30%.

I hasten to add that I haven’t seen anything about this on the Bloomberg School’s website, nor does a Google search turn up anything about this most recent survey.

There is bound to be a lot of controversy about this estimate. The lowest point in the reported range for July, 426,369, is nearly ten times the low estimate at Iraq Body Count for today, 43850. I’m not sure what IBC was claiming in July, but anyone who is interested can sum the reports on the IBC database back to then and subtract the total from the current count.

The reason for the broad confidence interval is the small size of the sample, but that doesn’t mean the estimate is wrong. What it means is that the researchers, using conventional statistical reasoning that is accepted by their critics in any other context, are very confident that the actual number of violent deaths is in the reported range. As the estimate approaches 601,023, they are less and less confident. It is worth emphasizing that they are just as confident that the actual number is at the high end of the range (793,663) as at the low end – it is not more likely to be between 426,369 and 601,023 than it is to be between 601,023 and 793,663. It is more likely to be between, say, 501,023 and 701,023 than it is to be between 600,023 and 602,023.

And there are other factors that could conspire against the accuracy of the estimate. The Times doesn’t tell us how the researchers defined an ‘Iraqi family’. Indeed, the researchers may not have even used a ’family’ as the unit they were enumerating. It is quite plausible that the Times is confusing concepts like ‘family’ and ‘household’. The media do this every day. The people interviewed may not have reported accurately. The interviewers may have falsified data. But these are issues in every survey and they seldom arouse doubt, or even comment, in any other context.

So how do we explain the discrepancy? IBC’s method is much more conservative. It is not based on accepted principles of statistical sampling and estimation. It is simply a count of deaths reported from certain causes – roughly the same set of causes as the Johns Hopkins study, as far as I can ascertain so far – in at least two independent media sources:

For a source to be considered acceptable to this project it must comply with the following standards: (1) site updated at least daily; (2) all stories separately archived on the site, with a unique url (see Note 1 below); (3) source widely cited or referenced by other sources; (4) English Language site; (5) fully public (preferably free) web-access.

The project relies on the professional rigour of the approved reporting agencies. It is assumed that any agency that has attained a respected international status operates its own rigorous checks before publishing items (including, where possible, eye-witness and confidential sources). By requiring that two independent agencies publish a report before we are willing to add it to the count, we are premising our own count on the self-correcting nature of the increasingly inter-connected international media network. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/background.php

The site lists 38 sources identified as ‘some core sources’. It is not at all clear whether this list is comprehensive or indicative, and if not exhaustive, whether it comprises 97% or 1% of the core sources. Nor do we know what non core sources are being used or on what basis. Anyway, among the ‘core sources’ they mention are such beacons of truth as Fox news, the London Telegraph, the Toronto Star (but not the slightly more reputable Globe and mail), and of course the NYT.

I assume that when they write of ‘two independent agencies’, they mean that the reports come from completely independent sources. So if the NYT reports what AFP said, that’s not a second report. Ultimately, it seems to mean that at least two different reporters have to have interviewed witnesses or seen documentation of a death before it adds to their count. We know that the vast majority of reporters in Iraq are either holed up in the Emerald City far from the action and almost all the rest are embedded with the occupation forces. Then some reports may exist that are never published for editorial reasons. Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that only a fraction of the total number of deaths that actually occur are reported, and an even smaller fraction independently reported by two separate agencies.

IBC is fairly upfront about what it is that they are reporting, to their credit. But they have been subject to a lot of criticism, especially by MediaLens. The nature of the critique, as I read it, revolves around two issues. For one thing, IBC relies on ‘the professional rigour of the approved reporting agencies’, which MediaLens quite understandably rejects. For another, the media, and politicians, tend to recycle the IBC figures as if they were something they are not. If the criticism is that it is not good enough to mention your methodology on your website and then allow the media to report figures however they like without making a point of correcting those misperceptions by consistently drawing attention to what the figures really represent, that seems sound to me.

Statistics of all kinds are widely misunderstood. Those who collect, analyse, and publish them tend to be fairly conscientious about providing the information required to interpret them correctly. There are definitions, classifications, explanatory notes, footnotes, glossaries, details of the collection methodology, sampling procedure, often even the text of the questions asked. It is largely because those reporting the statistics in the media do not bother familiarizing themselves with and explaining these ‘metadata’ that statistics have gained their widespread notoriety as distortions. In a sense, it is not the fault of those disseminating statistics that they are being abused like this, but in my view, they do have a responsibility to publicly repudiate abuses. And this certainly applies to IBC at least as much as to anyone else.

In their defense, one of the points IBC make is that they exclude combatant deaths. They criticize the authors of the previous Hopkins study published in the Lancet for including combatant deaths and not being sufficiently open about it. Of course IBC rely on their trusted, but decidedly untrustworthy, media sources not only for the numbers killed, but for distinguishing combatants from civilians. As if they could tell. It is notoriously difficult to make this distinction in the kind of counterinsurgency that’s going on in Iraq and I think it must be particularly difficult in a society where nearly everyone is armed. It’s also worth pointing out that most of the ‘combatants’ killed in the counterinsurgency – those who really are combatants – are only in combat because of the invasion and occupation that they are quite legitimately resisting. So excluding them from the toll of the war is deeply cynical.

It is worth remembering in this context that the people who have taken up arms against the imperialist occupation, whether they are motivated by ‘pure’ anti-imperialist sentiments, revenge for a lost loved one or cavalier humiliation, or Islamic extremist jihadism, are in the front line of the struggle against imperialism, are doing us all a favour, and deserve our gratitude and support.

The real point, of course, is that the US never had any business going into Iraq in the first place. They had no business cultivating Saddam in the 50s and 60s. They had no business supporting the Ba’ath coup in 1963, or Saddam’s takeover in 1968. They had no business arming Iraq to the teeth and provoking their attack on Iran, much less on arming both sides to maximize the devastation. They had no business giving Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait and then turning around and smashing the country to smithereens. Or imposing sanctions for over a decade that killed a million and caused awful suffering for millions more, for turning their backs on those they encouraged to rise against Saddam and even providing him with air cover as he slaughtered them. For the crime against humanity of invading and occupying Iraq for the sole purpose of gaining a strangehold on the energy sources of their economic rivals in Europe, Japan, and China, no penalty is too severe. That even one Iraqi was killed in pursuit of such an objective is unimaginably vicious and cynical.

I heard Amy Goodman’s 27 September interview with Seymour Hersh this morning. He claims to have spoken to a lot of returning soldiers and mentions two things in particular that I think are relevant. It is apparently so dangerous for those supplying the troops that they drive their trucks up the highway at night without lights at 120km per hour, even as they go through populated areas. It is very windy in the desert, and when the wind is going the wrong way, you can’t hear the trucks coming. He didn’t say how many he thought were killed this way, but again, even one would be too many. He also said that US troops travel in convoys of three. When the first in the convoy hits an IED, everyone piles out of the other two and shoots everything that moves. He mentioned an incident he’d heard about where what moved was a bunch of people playing soccer in a nearby field. The perpetrators tried to cover up their crime by planting material suggesting that the murdered were ‘combatants’.

Again, one is already way too many, particularly in pursuit of such venal objectives. But not everyone feels that way, thanks in no small measure to the professional integrity of the media. Some might think 45,000 dead and uncounted wounded, crippled, blinded, etc. is a price worth paying for freedom. And perhaps it would be, if it had anything to do with freedom. But those same people might balk at 600,000 – roughly a fortieth of the total population. And it is worth bearing in mind that, according to the Times, the study only enumerates ‘violent deaths’ – not deaths from diseases caused by the destruction of sewage and water treatment facilities, certainly not from depleted uranium radiation poisoning. So this study is very welcome and we should continue to emphasise that the highest estimates are at least as plausible as the lower ones and probably more plausible than the lowest, which come from the quisling Iraqi ‘government’ and IBC.

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.