Category Archives: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

'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.”

New Historians’ Hissie Fit

History, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Propaganda, Pseudo-history

In Harvard Hucksters, I spoke about the modus operandi of the New Historians: This is a group of popular far-left fabricators (one of whom facetiously boasted: ‘We perform at weddings and bar mitzvas’), who’ve cocked a snook at the liberal country in which they’ve thrived, so as to gain admittance into the fashionable Palestinian pantheon… they misrepresent documents, resort to partial quotes, withhold evidence, make false assertions, and rewrites original documents. Such is the incompetence of these Arabists that they even neglect Arab archival material, “relying almost exclusively on Western often only secondary sources.” As Ha’aretz’s Avraham Tal puts it, they are preoccupied with the systematic invalidation of the Zionist narrative in the Israeli-Arab conflict. Avi Shlaim, one of the performers in the New-Historian’s much sought-after vaudeville, juggles the facts to come up with an analysis of Israel’s failed war in Lebanon. The shtick is familiar: no mention of the eight dead and a murderous diversionary shelling of border communities by Hezbollah, but plenty of assertions about the vampiric lusts of the Jewish State’s leaders. The anatomy of hating Israel is worth reading.

New Historians' Hissie Fit

History, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Propaganda, Pseudo-history

In Harvard Hucksters, I spoke about the modus operandi of the New Historians: This is a group of popular far-left fabricators (one of whom facetiously boasted: ‘We perform at weddings and bar mitzvas’), who’ve cocked a snook at the liberal country in which they’ve thrived, so as to gain admittance into the fashionable Palestinian pantheon… they misrepresent documents, resort to partial quotes, withhold evidence, make false assertions, and rewrites original documents. Such is the incompetence of these Arabists that they even neglect Arab archival material, “relying almost exclusively on Western often only secondary sources.” As Ha’aretz’s Avraham Tal puts it, they are preoccupied with the systematic invalidation of the Zionist narrative in the Israeli-Arab conflict. Avi Shlaim, one of the performers in the New-Historian’s much sought-after vaudeville, juggles the facts to come up with an analysis of Israel’s failed war in Lebanon. The shtick is familiar: no mention of the eight dead and a murderous diversionary shelling of border communities by Hezbollah, but plenty of assertions about the vampiric lusts of the Jewish State’s leaders. The anatomy of hating Israel is worth reading.

This Time, Israel is Dead Wrong

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism, War

I’m a Zionist and proud. Look no further than the arguments I’ve advanced in defense of a beleaguered Israel over the years.

I believe Israel has a right to the land it bought from willing Arabs (Turks and locals) using private funds. Jews established a majority in a sliver of Israel they purchased fair and square. Upon that majority, a young UN conferred statehood, recognizing the Jewish people’s natural right to have non-coercively purchased land from those willing to sell it, and resettle a territory that had been barren. The Jewish State enshrined minority rights in its Declaration of Independence and in its laws and institutions.

Many impoverished idealistic Jews died warding off Arab attackers and draining swamps. The idea that prior to the Jewish state Muslims and Jews lived in harmony is a humbug. Defenseless pacifist Jews have always been victims of periodic Muslim onslaught. When Muhammad’s muse moved them, the indigenous (often nomadic) Arabs would pounce. The massacres of 1920, 1921, and 1929 are examples:

The targets were not Zionists who had dispossessed Arabs of their lands, but for the most part Jewish communities of the ‘old Yishuv,’ communities that had lived in Palestine for many hundreds of years. The pogroms were of the same general character as pogroms that had taken place sporadically in Palestine for hundreds of years, usually referred to euphemistically by Jews of Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem and Hebron as ‘Meoraot’—’events.’ The worst massacres took place in Safed, Hebron, Jerusalem and Motza. Like the pogroms of past ages, these ‘disturbances’ featured angry crowds stirred up over a religious or other dispute, Imams preaching ‘Kill the Jews wherever you find them,’ and mobs screaming ‘Aleihum’ (get them) and ‘Itbach Al Yahood’—murder the Jews. In a few days, over a hundred Jews were murdered and several hundreds were wounded. [That’s in 1929.]

While there were indeed injustices against the local population after the Arab countries attacked Israel in 1948, these were sporadic, not systematic. The charge of planned ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is bogus.

I hold that the “society” that sends suicide bombers into Israel proper is a savage and atrophying one—not because of Israel or America, but because of its own values and sources of inspirations. Ditto that state-within-a-state, Hezbollah.

I am fully aware of the staged set-ups in the war in Lebanon. The Jenin “massacre” fable and the Mohammed Al-Dura case are among the more notorious hoaxes perpetrated by propagandizing Arabs on the West.

However, the hoaxes do not explain away a devastated Lebanon—destruction so wanton it must turn the stomach of any honest human being.

The ongoing frauds, long an arrow in the Arab quiver, do not resurrect the 900 Lebanese dead, nor restore close to one million homeless to their obliterated homes.

You can discount what the hard-left, the far-right, and the far-gone libertarians say about Israel, if you like. Because their positions are intransigent—Israel evil; Arabs good—they can be said to evince ingrained bias.

But given my long-standing pro-Israel position, you cannot discard my stance.

And it is this: It is impossible to finesse Israel’s wrongs. The Israeli Air Force’s shock-and-awe has been barbaric. Instead of starting with precision, “deep-penetration” operations, Israel began with brute force, turning Lebanon into a parking lot and its inhabitants into homeless people.

I repeat what I said two weeks back, “Hezbollah (and Hamas) target civilians and hide among them. Although necessary, this fact, however, is not sufficient to exempt Israel from responsibility for its direct actions. For those, Israel can’t shirk accountability. It can’t claim it didn’t intend to take out civilians when Israeli generals can both see and foresee the devastating results of their bombardments.”

Any principled human being devoted to justice and freedom has to be repulsed by what Israel has done and is busy doing.