[Peace-discuss] Israel piece for the N-G

[Morton K. Brussel]

An excellent presentation, Carl.  I would only emphasize somewhat  
more that the "collective punishment" inflicted on a society--in this  
case Lebanon, its people and its civilian infrastructure--is a crime  
against humanity which we are told tis uniting the world against  
us.   I also would differ a bit on responsibility: Yes, the US could  
stop these atrocious acts with a snap of its fingers, and it is  
backing the Israelis diplomatically, economically, and with weaponry,  
but this does not mean that the Israeli leaders and much of its  
population are not equally culpable. One should condemn both actors  
of this horrible drama. I don't buy the argument that Israel is only  
a pawn of the U.S.; it is a dependent client, yes, but it has its own  
reasons for what it does. That they often coincide with American  
reasons is just in the nature of their imperialist or colonialist  
natures.

Aside from that, you should fix the typo "armory" in the third to the  
last paragraph.

Send it in!

Mort


On Jul 28, 2006, at 1:11 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [I'm submitting this as a proposed "guest commentary" to the News- 
> Gazette.  Comments welcome.  --CGE]
>
> ========================================
>
>
> ISRAEL: A MILITARIZED OFFSHOOT OF THE U.S.
>
> The U.S. government, having devastated one Middle Eastern people,  
> the Iraqis, for fifteen years, and having allowed the devastation  
> of another, the Palestinians, for almost forty, has now licensed  
> its client state once again to murder Lebanese, as it did twenty- 
> four years ago. Israel killed more that 20,000 people when it  
> invaded Lebanon in 1982: in the first weeks of its current assault  
> on the Lebanese, it has killed hundreds.
>
> Two things should be recognized about the killing of Arab men,  
> women and children in Gaza and Lebanon: (1) these attacks were long  
> planned and are not simply responses to the capture of Israeli  
> soldiers; and (2) Israel does nothing without the assent of the US  
> government.  Therefore as Americans our objections to these  
> murderous policies should be addressed to the American rather than  
> to the Israeli government (still less to a supposedly all-powerful  
> Israeli lobby).
>
> It is reported that the the Israeli military wanted to launch these  
> attacks last summer but were denied permission by the US Secretary  
> of State.  This summer the signal from the Bush administration was  
> different -- perhaps because Rice had lost an internal fight to the  
> Rumsfeld-Cheney faction.  In any case, she has now been made the  
> spokesperson for the administration's position that the Israeli  
> attacks should continue, that there should be no ceasefire.
>
> We as US citizens continue to pay for planes and bombs that are  
> killing and maiming people in Lebanon and Gaza, destroying the  
> county, and instructing a new generation of “terrorists” in hatred  
> for the US and Israel.  In the last weeks the Israelis' attacks in  
> Gaza and throughout Lebanon – including deliberate attacks on a  
> U.N. installation and medical vehicles – have killed mostly  
> civilians, with thousands wounded; at least a third of the  
> casualties have been children, according to the U.N. Undersecretary  
> for Humanitarian Affairs.  Israeli deaths in the attacks – mostly  
> soldiers, not civilians – have been a tenth of those of Arabs.
>
> US politicians of both parties pretend Israelis' murder of Arabs is  
> justified because Israeli soldiers were captured by Arab  
> guerrillas. They ignore the Israeli military's ravaging of Gaza,  
> from which Israel did not "withdraw" when it removed Jewish  
> settlements: instead, it established perhaps the world's largest  
> prison camp, controlled from the outside by the Israeli army.  They  
> ignore the hundreds of prisoners from Lebanon (and the thousands of  
> Palestinians) held by the Jewish state, often in conditions that  
> may have been a model for Abu Ghraib.
>
> The US and Israel arbitrarily say that the crisis began with the  
> “kidnapping” of Israeli soldiers.  But the taking of the Israeli  
> soldier in Gaza was preceded by the Israelis' abduction of a  
> Palestinian doctor and his brother; and the internment of much of  
> the Palestinian Authority government preceded the capture of two  
> Israeli soldiers on the Israel/Lebanon border.  Even the  
> circumstances of that incident may not be what is assumed in the  
> US: there is some evidence that the Israeli patrol was attacked on  
> Lebanese territory, not in Israel.
>
> But why did Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia political party that drove  
> the Israelis out of southern Lebanon in 2000, give Israel an excuse  
> for making war by capturing Israeli soldiers?  Although  
> spokespeople for the Israeli military are frequently allowed by the  
> American media to offer explanations (often in American accents)  
> for their operations, Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah  
> rarely is.  But he explained clearly what the leadership of  
> Hizbullah was thinking: “We are telling the Palestinians, you  
> should not lose hope ... [and] it was logical for such an act to  
> solve the prisoners' issue” -- i.e., by an exchange of prisoners,  
> as had been arranged before.
>
> With the Israelis (and apparently the Bush administration) spoiling  
> for war – perhaps because as in 1982 there was danger that peace  
> might break out - Hizbullah's capture of the soldiers provided the  
> excuse, weak as it was, for the Israelis to loose terror and  
> destruction upon the Lebanese people - from planes, rockets and  
> bombs made in the USA.  “No ceasefire,” says Secretary of State  
> Rice, because “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
>
> Many Americans seem to find that argument persuasive, but as  
> British MP George Galloway points out, “Imagine if Lebanon  
> destroyed every bridge in Israel, blew up the international  
> airport, blockaded the ports, severed every arterial road, ordered  
> people to leave their homes and then bombed them to pieces when  
> they did... Do you think any Western leader would utter the words  
> 'Lebanon has a right to defend itself'?”
>
> Some Americans think that the US/Israeli actions are justified  
> because they're aimed at stopping the rockets into northern Israel,  
> including the city of Haifa, some twenty miles south of the  
> border.  But Hizbullah began firing those rockets – puny in  
> comparison with Israeli munitions – only after the Israeli air  
> force had attacked Beirut and much of the rest of Lebanon.
>
> British journalist Jonathan Cook describes the situation. “In  
> contrast to the image of Hizbullah frothing at the mouth to destroy  
> Israel, its leader Hassan Nasrallah held off from serious  
> retaliation. For the first day and a half, he limited his strikes  
> to the northern borders areas, which have faced Hizbullah attacks  
> in the past and are well protected. He waited till late on July 13  
> before turning his guns on Haifa, even though we now know he could  
> have targeted Israel's third largest city from the outset. A small  
> volley of rockets directed at Haifa caused no injuries and looked  
> more like a warning than an escalation ... [It is likely that  
> Hizbullah] collected the armory in the hope that it might prove a  
> deterrence - even if a very inadequate one, as Lebanon is now  
> discovering - against a repeat of Israel's invasions of 1978 and  
> 1982, and the occupation that lasted nearly two decades afterwards.”
>
> Cook, who writes from the city of Nazareth under Israeli  
> censorship, notes that “Hizbullah's rockets have been targeted  
> overwhelming at strategic locations: the northern economic hub of  
> Haifa, its satellite towns and the array of military sites across  
> the Galilee ... we can see from the choice of the sites he is  
> striking that his primary goal is to give Israelis a small taste of  
> the disruption of normal life that is being endured by the  
> Lebanese. He has effectively closed Haifa for more than a week,  
> shutting its port and financial centres.  Israeli TV is speaking  
> increasingly of the damage being inflicted on the country's  
> economy.  Because of Israel's press censorship laws, it is  
> impossible to discuss the locations of Israel's military  
> installations. But Hizbullah's rockets are accurate enough to show  
> that many are intended for the army's sites in the Galilee, even if  
> they are rarely precise enough to hit them. It is obvious to  
> everyone in Nazareth, for example, that the rockets landing close  
> by, and once on, the city over the past week are searching out, and  
> some have fallen extremely close to, the weapons factory sited near  
> us.”
>
> If there were any justice in this world, Bush and Cheney, Rice and  
> Rumsfeld, Olmert and Halutz would be standing before a new  
> Nuremberg Tribunal.  Instead, they will simply stoke their “global  
> war on terrorism,” the excuse offered for the crimes they are  
> committing.
>
> [C. G. Estabrook (Ph.D. in history, Harvard) is a retired visiting  
> professor at UIUC.]
>
>     ###
>
>
>
>
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