Category Archives: Middle East

Palestinian Civilians Props In Public Relation’s War

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East

As I pointed out on November 23, 2012, “Hamas hides among unwitting civilians, who have no way of controlling its activities. This fact does not give Israel the right to kill innocent non-combatants, not even unintentionally. Besides, murder is not ‘unintentional’ when you know it is inevitable.”

Still, from the fact that the Palestinian side sustains more casualties—it does not necessarily follow that they are the innocent party in the dispute. It’s not Israel’s fault, moreover, that its population is well-protected by rocket-repelling technology, mandatory bomb shelters and that Israelis benefit from an all-round, well-organized emergency response. Who among us would tolerate living with a constant barrage of bombs from our neighbors? If Gaza, which was ceded by Israel to the dogs of war (Hamas), has nothing by way of safety infrastructure, it is because its leaders invest in terrorism instead of in trade.

Ultimately, and as National Post’s Lorne Gunter astutely observed many years ago, “If Palestinians stopped their attacks today, tomorrow there would be no Israeli attacks.” But if Israel stopped unilaterally, Palestinians would be at it again in no time.

The latest developments, via DEBKAfile: “Israel air, sea and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip Thursday night, July 17, as IDF ground forces embarked on a ground attack, just announced by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Debkafile reports a softening-up operation to prepare for the entry of armored and infantry units. The IDF calls on the half million Gazans of southern towns of Khan Younes and Rafah to leave their homes for their own safety. Israelis living close to the Gaza border were advised to stay in bomb shelters.”

By the Telegraph’s telling, “Israel’s leaders are grimly aware of the risks they are taking by sending troops to fight in the crowded alleys of Gaza. Now that their forces are embroiled in this urban maze, they will lose much of their technological advantage against Hamas gunmen. One Israeli soldier was duly killed within hours of the invasion starting.”

Yet Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, believes that a ground operation is the only way to stop the rocket attacks. Meanwhile, Mr Masri made clear that the Hamas viewed it as a chance to inflict casualties on its enemy. “The Zionist army is very surprised by what the resistance possesses,” he said. “The resistance attacked tanks and Humvees with missiles and went behind enemy lines to conduct intelligence operations.”
But Israel is now fighting Hamas by land, sea and air. Two jet fighters soared overhead like silver arrowheads yesterday, scattering decoy flares across a cloudless summer sky.
Sa’ar Class missile boats from the Israeli navy have grown bold enough to pound their targets from close to the shore, although Hamas struck back with a missile that fell just short of its target, sending up a plume of white water.
Israeli commanders are trying to strangle Hamas from all directions. But the only certainty is that Gaza’s hospitals become more crowded by the day.

I tend to agree with Hamas that “Israel’s ground offensive is ‘foolish’ and will have ‘dreadful consequences.'” Since the Hamasniks consider their population no more than props in a public relation’s war, Palestinian casualties affect them not at all.

Ariel Sharon, Soldier In The Style Of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson

Homeland Security, Israel, Judaism & Jews, libertarianism, Middle East, Military

As a child growing up in Israel, this 1973 image of the late Ariel Sharon was seared in my mind. Had Sharon himself not performed military miracles, who knows if Israelis, myself included, would have survived. How many Americans can point to a leader who had actually saved their lives, rather than send other men to die in foreign countries and then propagandized his countrymen about having fought for their freedoms?

Seen in the image above, former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon led his men into battle and won the 1973 Yom Kippur War in which the Israeli government and the intelligence failed. Here Sharon is seen during that war “on the western bank of the Suez Canal in Egypt. Sharon said his greatest military success came during that war. He surrounded Egypt’s Third Army and, defying orders, led 200 tanks and 5,000 men over the Suez Canal, a turning point.”

Sharon died, Jan 11, after languishing in a vegetative state for 8 years.

During the Bush years, “libertarian who loathe Israel” would often compare Emperor Bush with Sharon, whom they detested too.

Hated though he was abroad, Sharon was a soldier in the style of “Stonewall” Jackson, not Dubya the Deserter. As a Special Forces commander, he personally led his troops into battle, performing daring assaults that saved Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars.

Agree or disagree with his methods, it is unarguable that Sharon’s overriding concern was with the security of his citizens. He saw himself as bearing a “historic responsibility” for “the fate of the Jewish people.” By contrast, Bush’s Wilsonian, global missionary movement related not even tangentially to the future and safety of the American people.

Unlike George Bush the internationalist, Arik Sharon was a fierce nationalist who cared first and foremost about his country. Under pressure from the U.S. for his treatment of terrorists, he was expected to make concessions to murderers who kill civilians, while Bush and the international community made no such allowances for al-Qaida.

Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, History, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism

“Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi” is the current column, now on WND. A excerpt:

“Us against al Qaeda”: This has been—still is—the narrowly conceived narrative among neoconservatives. As the politically provincial neoconservative foreign-policy paradigm has it, those were the forces that played out in the Benghazi affair, in which the American mission was left undefended, resulting in the slaughter of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans (who, given the pecking order in the Empire, generally go unnamed). …

… Uncovered by The Times’ investigation, however, was a very different reality in Benghazi—”murkier than either of those story lines suggests. Benghazi,” contends Kirkpatrick, “was not infiltrated by al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs.”

In particular are neoconservatives fulminating over the findings that “turned up no evidence that al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault,” and that “the attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Col. Gadhafi.”

How can that be? Easily: The history of Libya is festooned with similar ransacking and burning of consulates by angry local mobs. Alas, in the ignorance it cultivates about the past, America is Cicero’s perpetual child. By the definition of the great Roman statesman, “Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.” …

… The facts in the Benghazi affair have likewise been unwoven and retied into two contradictory narratives to suit the respective sides.

Think of lab rats racing through a maze, as you watch the sub-intelligent, dual-panel “dialogue” conducted on the teli. Hosts Stephanie Cutter (left-wing, social-democratic rat) and S. E. Cupp (right-wing, social-democratic rat): Each rat runs with a designated, neatly bifurcated (Republican or Democratic) political orthodoxy. Each is a “maze-bright” rat, and not the possessor and giver of any truth. …

Read the complete column. “Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi” is on WND.

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Decentralized ‘Al Qaeda’ Represents Ordinary Invaded Muslims

Foreign Policy, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Terrorism

“Us against Al Qaeda” is the narrowly conceived narrative among neoconservatives. As the politically provincial neoconservative foreign-policy paradigm has it, those were the forces that allegedly played out in Benghazi.

Understandably, Fox News is fuming over “A Deadly Mix in Benghazi,” David D. Kirkpatrick’s expose in the New York Times. For these Republicans hold that:

Mr. Stevens died in a carefully planned assault by Al Qaeda to mark the anniversary of its strike on the United States 11 years before. Republicans have accused the Obama administration of covering up evidence of Al Qaeda’s role to avoid undermining the president’s claim that the group has been decimated, in part because of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The investigation by The Times, however, shows:

…that the reality in Benghazi was different, and murkier, than either of those story lines suggests. Benghazi was not infiltrated by Al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs.

In particular are neoconservatives fulminating over the NYT findings that “turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.” “The attack,” it was revealed, “was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi.”

I have no doubt, simply based on the history and policies of the US in the Middle-East, that to the extent the “American-made video denigrating Islam” is a symbolic proxy for the hatred harbored by the invaded Muslims for the invading Americans-–to that extent it is probably correct to say that the video, more so than the mythical Al Qaeda, was a catalyst for the attack on our embassy in Benghazi.

However, the NYT is hardly unsparingly honest; it is, in fact, as dishonest and politically provincial as the neocons of Fox News.

Predictably ignored in the Kirkpatrick article is that Al Qaeda has morphed into many decentralized operations that mirror the aspirations of the invaded Muslims to be free of invading Westerners—unless of course they can get us to bankroll their Baksheesh economy.

There is cross-pollination between these double-crossing entities. So wrong was the Gray Eminence on Iraq that the NYT reporter who piped lies straight form Bush’s White House to her Times readers was recruited to Fox News: She is Judith Chalabi Miller.