Israeli girls send messages |
| Message received: 3 children dead |
I hope the Israeli girls pictured above are happy that their pen-pals to the north got the message. The men you see grieving on the right, according to Der Speigel, are mourning the deaths of their three young family members.
Three kids blown up in a canal. Israel bombed a terrorist canal, apparenlty. Will we hear that these three children were Hezbollah kids engaged in Hezbollah activities in their Hezbollah canal?
I had to go to a German news organization to get this while most Americans are having to make do with "news" no better than what they get in North Korea. We are told that the Israel's war is the US' war, that the regional conflict is World War III/IV/V/[watch this space], that Israel is fighting Syria and Iran who attacked us on 9/11. The opinions we are offered as the only respectable options are beneath the contempt of any thinking person, and certainly beneath the contempt of anyone who would call himself an American.
WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC CONTENT FOLLOWS
VIA
TEXAS KAOS
--
For instance, Juan Cole reads you the news ... from Cyprus:
Israel struck at large numbers of targets on Sunday, and early Monday morning, that had nothing to do with Hezbollah. The far north of Lebanon is Sunni, as is the port of Tripoli, where the Israelis killed a Catholic Lebanese soldier. They also hit factories in north Beirut, not a Shiite area. They bombed a village near Zahle, a notorious center of Greek Orthodox, killing 3 civilians. The Israelis are either not very good shots, since they have murdered 140 civilians since Wednesday and only managed to kill about 17 Lebanese military personnel. Or they just don't give a damn.
Sixty more have died in Lebanon since that was written. That's ten times the loss south of the border. But I don't mean to draw a comparison between the casualties. As you can see in the photos, the two sides' civilians maintain very different relationships with violence.
Israel has the inalienable to right to defend itself. Their current military action, however, has no conceivable relation to defense, nor does it help in the war on terror or put pressure on its supporters.
The Israeli objective seems to be to put enough pressure on Lebanon that Hezbollah will be removed. To that end, Israel is bombing the Shi'ite neighborhoods just over the border, bombing them indiscriminately. Ze'ev Schiff, the defense editor for Ha'aretz, was on NPR this morning saying that all these people must have had Hezbollah rockets in their homes anyway, so it's OK. Besides, the report noted, polls show that Israelis overwhelmingly support the present collective punishment of Lebanon.
Well, since I don't have a dog in that fight, let me just point out that killing Lebanese civilians in order to change Lebanon's policies is called "terrorism."
Those of us who want to defeat terrorists but who have also criticized Israel's aggression (both soft and hard) over the years are often challenged to explain why we maintain a "double standard" on violence in the region when, in fact, we're being consistent. Let me explain it to those people, before they waste space with their predictable and canned objections:
I, an American citizen, expect a
1. nation-state
2. democratic
3. ally of my country
to behave in a way that is different from a
1. non-state actor
2. militant organization
3. enemy of my country.
Since Israel often fails to be any different, I feel free to point that out. In fact, I have often felt obligated to point that out, just as I did for the US support for brutal regimes in El Salvador and Iraq, just to provide two examples, and I'm not impressed with intimidation tactics like calling me an anti-semite.
But this time around, there is a difference.
Simply put, one side is shooting at Israelis and is killing Israelis, the other claims it's shooting at Hezbollah and is killing Lebanese. We are supposed to treat the first as terrorists (they are) and the second as somehow different. Well, they are, but not in the sense that they are not terrorists. The difference that I see here is that on one side civilians in Lebanon who do not support Hezbollah are suffering, while on the other reprisal rocket raids fall on those who overwhelmingly support the current war.
A non-state actor, Hezbollah, has provided Israelis with an opportunity to butcher those who do not support Hezbollah. On one side, children support the killing with glee. On the other, children unconnected to Hezbollah are blown to pieces playing in a canal. I will not make the mistake of drawing a moral equivalence between the two kinds of violence. They are indeed very different.
I can tell the difference between good and evil, but I don't see how I'm supposed to support one evil over another, especially when there is no good that comes of either of them, to me or my country. Bombing the Shi'ites out of southern Lebanon. Not so much ethnic cleansing as sectarian cleansing.
Call it "pogrom by bomb."
Terrorists do things like this:
Blown-out residences. The difference between the Israeli victims of the present violence and the Lebanese victims is that the Lebanese aren't responsible for the missiles coming over the border and don't support it. South of the border, Israel is responsible for the bombs headed north and there is overwhelming support for them doing so. That's what the polls show. Lebanese citizens don't want a terrorist organization to drag them into a war they can't win. For the Israelis, however, it's an opportunity to kill people they don't see as human anyway.
Also, a 10:1 kill ratio makes the current violence attractive to Israel. There is, after all, a demographic war on.
And so this war is supposed to be "our war." The current action is not justifiable in its own context, let alone by American principles. Those here who say that Israel is fighting our war, against those who never attacked us, are not Americans and never were. They just live here.
In defense of Israel, however, I will point out that this is America's war in a way: no one can have missed how the world has learned to yawn at the daily images of dead civilians in Iraq. America's war on terror has established the low standards that have enabled tyrants from Zimbabwe to Russia. I cannot fault Israel, as an American, because my country had blazed the trail they are following. My opinion stands merely on my human capacity for disgust. I have no nation, it seems, to represent the ideals of my country. Not any more.
No, as an American, I have no right to criticize Israel because my country has pissed away its moral authority. I have shown you "the difference between them and them," but as Americans we are no better than any of them.
It is as if my country is leading the way in defeating open-source warfare by making "collateral damage" completely acceptable to its citizens. We will return to the methods of ancient conquerors. The state will renew its monopoly of violence. Fear of state terror and bombed civilians will restore order.
The "Holy Land" seems always to have been a sewer of sadism. The wingnuts who're cheering Israel on today would be aghast to learn that when their fellow Christians controlled Jerusalem the violence between one Christian sect and another was little different. There is nothing inherent in Israel or Lebanon, Jew or Muslim, or anyone else for that matter that can explain the inhuman insanity that has stained that corner of the earth for hundreds of years. Rather, it is the use to which God is put by tiny men, as a blank check for their own egos, that accounts for the unique evil that this land breeds. Since Jerusalem is claimed by all three People of the Book, the worst and weakest among them will always strive with one another to see who can stoop the lowest in the presence of an alleged God.
.