Category Archives: Israel

Israelis Confound Bush Babes

Israel

Israelis have a different attitude to their leaders than do Americans. No sooner had our local war harpies lined up to can-can for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, than the Israeli people were calling for his canning. How embarrassing!

Here Gideon Levy complains that his countrymen’s complaints against the Lebanon war and its prosecutors are not sufficiently principled. They’re already at the stage of critiquing the critiques. Kudos!

Back here at home, Bush’s Stepford Wives (new ones have cropped up since that was written) continue to stand by their man, leveling that childish accusation — “Bush hater,” or traitor — at anyone who dares to suggest the king’s in the mental buff.

On a less optimistic note: Israel says it may have to take on Iran alone. Now there’s an idea: After the Israeli Defense Forces defeated Hezbollah with such ease (not!), why not take on those responsible for training that remarkably capable terrorist organization?

From Bondage to Freedom

Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Media, Middle East

Fox Correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were freed, after being held in Palestinian captivity for two weeks. Hostage taking is a developing industry in the PA, an import from “liberated” Iraq, it would seem. Better that than, say, working for a living.

I don’t mean to criticize the two men. They had to placate their captors. I fully understand and sympathize with that. I’m just not quite clear on the conclusions Centanni and Wiig drew from their harrowing ordeal:

Said Centanni: “the Palestinian people are very beautiful and kind-hearted,” a sentiment Wiig reiterated by expressing his fear that the plight of the Beauteous Ones would be left untold if such unlovely acts proliferated. (No such luck: the most rehashed story ever will continue to be rehashed, and the resolution of the so-called Palestinian problem tied to every treaty or agreement imaginable. I hear Pigmy tribes won’t parcel out a piece of rain forest without a promise that the plight of the Palestinian people be solved.)

Centanni related that they “were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint.” But incase viewers took issue with Centanni’s use of the word “forced,” or if they understood him to mean he would not have converted voluntarily, Centanni quickly qualified: “Don’t get me wrong here,” he told Fox. “I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns…”

Despite the oddly inverse conclusions the two freed media men drew from the experience, they hastily departed for Israel through the northern Erez border crossing. As the old adage goes, actions speak louder than words.

Israel Has Something To Be Proud Of

Israel

In Israel, the reckoning over Lebanon began even before the ceasefire went into effect. Soldiers were questioning the mission. Reserve soldiers are returning home with a kitbag full of complaints,” writesAkiva Eldar of Ha’aretz newspaper. The news media was buzzing with reports about failures of intelligence, funding, and execution at the highest echelons.

As they witnessed rockets and missiles raining down on northern Israel, ordinary Israelis began grumbling about how their prime minister failed to do much more than get their men killed and level Lebanon. Now they’re calling Olmert’s stint a plain failure. Many of Israel’s pointy heads are predicting he won’t last.

Indeed, politicians and military men appear to be fair game in that country. There’s none of this, “It’s treason to criticize the troops and the commander-in-chief during a war.” Why, Israeli soldiers themselves joined in committing treason American style.

Practically nobody in Israel denies the war was a whopping failure (that camp is biggest in the US). There is no attempt, as in the US, to create a parallel universe, a Third Dimension, where reality is reversed to comport with political spin. (We even have a cable channel dedicated to sanitizing Iraq.)

Contrast the atmosphere in Israel with that in the US.

Iraq is a disgrace, a blot. The invasion was unprovoked, conducted in ignorance of Iraqi history and fractious ethnic and religious makeup. (The British fought the identical insurrection in 1920.) America’s actions in Iraq have caused thousands of civilian deaths, destroyed infrastructure, halted oil production, and saddled the American taxpayer with the burden, in perpetuity, it would appear, because to leave is to “cut and run,” say the Treason Twits.
Yet an entire military-media-industrial-congressional-complex has risen to smear anyone who states these facts. The “reality based community” is called “anti-war, anti-America, traitors, Bush-haters.”

A month after the failed war commenced, Israelis are ready to string up their leaders. Three years after the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, a good number of Americans are still quite willing to hang any sensible individual who so much as hints at the need to fire the goons in charge.

‘Hezbollah’s Other War’

Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism

Michael Young of Reason Magazine has penned an outstanding analysis of the Lebanese political landscape in the New York Times. Young is the opinion editor of The Daily Star, an English-language newspaper published in Beirut. Skip the ideologically slanted positions proffered on the blogs, left and right, in favor of this forensic breakdown:

“The great fear expressed by many Lebanese is that the country can absorb neither a Hezbollah victory against Israel nor a Hezbollah defeat. If Hezbollah merely survives as both a political and military organization, it can claim victory. The result may be the expansion of the party’s authority over the political system, thanks to its weaponry and its considerable sway over the Lebanese Army, which has a substantial Shiite base. This, in turn, might lead to a solidification of Iranian influence and the restoration of Syrian influence. A Hezbollah defeat, in turn, would be felt by Shiites as a defeat for their community in general, significantly destabilizing the system.

As one Hezbollah combatant recently told The Guardian: ‘The real battle is after the end of this war. We will have to settle score with the Lebanese politicians. We also have the best security and intelligence apparatus in this country, and we can reach any of those people who are speaking against us now. Let’s finish with the Israelis, and then we will settle scores later.”

This essentially repeated what Hassan Nasrallah told Al Jazeera in an interview broadcast a week after the conflict began: ‘If we succeed in achieving the victory . . . we will never forget all those who supported us at this stage. . . . As for those who sinned against us . . . those who made mistakes, those who let us down and those who conspired against us . . . this will be left for a day to settle accounts. We might be tolerant with them, and we might not.’

Meanwhile, the country has sunk into deep depression, and countless Lebanese with the means to emigrate are thinking of doing so. The offspring of March 8 and March 14 are in the same boat, and yet still remain very much apart. The fault lines from the days of the Independence Intifada have hardened under Israel’s bombs. Given the present balance of forces, it is difficult to conceive of a resolution to the present fighting that would both satisfy the majority’s desire to disarm Hezbollah and satisfy Hezbollah’s resolve to defend Shiite gains and remain in the vanguard of the struggle against Israel. Something must give, and until the parliamentary majority and Hezbollah can reach a common vision of what Lebanon must become, the rot will set in further.”