[Peace] New notes 2006-07-17: US/Israeli War

[C. G. Estabrook]

	========================================================
	My notes on last week's "global war on terrorism" (GWOT)
	-- regularly prepared for the Sunday meeting of AWARE,
	the "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana --
	this week are in the form of the script for a radio show
	broadcast on Monday 17 July 2006 on community station
	WEFT-Champaign. Sources and citations will be provided
	on request; paragraphs followed by a source abbreviation
	in brackets are substantially verbatim. --CGE
	========================================================

	17 JULY 2006 // "TELLING TIME" // SCRIPT

[1] GOOD EVENING. It's just after 6pm on Monday, July 17, 2006. It's the
anniversary of the great railroad strike of 1877. It began in
Martinsburg, West Virginia, in response to the cutting of wages for the
second time in a year by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Striking workers
would not allow any of the stock to roll until this second wage cut was
revoked. The governor sent in state militia units to restore train
service, but the soldiers refused to use force against the strikers and
the governor called for federal troops. Meanwhile, the strike spread to
Baltimore, causing violent street battles between the striking workers
and the Maryland militia. When the outnumbered federal troops fired on
an attacking crowd, they killed 11 and wounded 40.

In Pittsburgh, Thomas Alexander Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, one
of the first robber barons, suggested that the strikers should be given
"a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread."
But again local law enforcement officers refused to fire on the
strikers. Finally on July 21 militiamen were found who bayoneted and
fired on rock-throwing strikers, killing twenty people and wounding
twenty-nine others. The strikers drove off the militiamen and then set
fires that destroyed 39 buildings, 104 locomotives and 1,245 freight and
passenger cars. On July 22, the militiamen mounted a counterattack,
killing 20 more people on their way out of the city. After over a month,
President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in federal troops to end the strikes.

Three-hundred miles to the east, Philadelphia strikers battled local
militia and set fire to much of Center City before federal troops
intervened and put down the uprising. But the strike spread to the
Midwest and West. On July 21, workers in East St. Louis halted all
freight traffic and controlled the city for the next week. On July 24,
rail traffic in Chicago was paralyzed, as was railroad traffic in
Bloomington, Aurora, Peoria, Decatur, and here in Champaign Urbana. Coal
miners in the pits at Braidwood, LaSalle, Springfield, and Carbondale
went on strike as well.

In Chicago, the headlines of the Chicago Times screamed, "TERRORS REIGN,
THE STREETS OF CHICAGO GIVEN OVER TO HOWLING MOBS OF THIEVES AND
CUTTHROATS." The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was put down only when
when President Hayes sent federal troops from city to city, suppressing
strike after strike. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 subsided by
September .

Illinois governor Shelby Cullom stated that "the vagrant, the willfully
idle, was the chief element in all these disturbances," his premise
being that an unemployed man was unemployed due to choice, rather than
the lack of jobs.

Many states enacted conspiracy statutes. States formed new militia
units, and National Guard armories were constructed in a number of
cities. The strikers were driven, as a Pittsburgh state militiaman, who
was ordered to break the 1877 strike, pointed out, by “one spirit and
one purpose among them–that they were justified in resorting to any
means to break down the power of the corporations.”


[2] IT'S "TELLING TIME: ADDITIONS TO THE CORPORATE NEWS" at WEFT. I'm
Carl Estabrook, and our program takes its inspiration from a line in a
1934 play, "The Front Page" -- [QUOTE]

"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers
is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock."

Electronic media -- and the one real American innovation of the 20th
century, Public Relations -- have made the matter much worse than it was
when Ben Hecht wrote that line, 70 years ago. Corporate news controls
much of what we know -- not so much by suppressing stories (altho' they
sometimes do that, too) -- but by providing emphasis, directing our
attention, telling us what's important, and indicating *how* we should
think about the stories that that they do report .

Against that, on "Telling Time" we want to take the time to tell you
stories from the foreign press, blogs, and other alternative media, as
well as stories that have been overlooked or downplayed in the media
owned by big business.


[3] FOR EXAMPLE, the on-going Israeli killings of hundreds of people in
Lebanon and Gaza are ascribed by the corporate news you hear elsewhere
to "kidnappings" (rarely "capture") of Israeli soldiers, one by Hamas
militants from Gaza, and three more by Hezbollah soldiers from Lebanon.
The news is presented as if everything began there. But did you hear
that -- on June 24, two days before the the first kidnapping -- Israel
abducted two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother. They were taken
to Israel, presumably, and nobody knows what's become of them, and the
media don't ask.. But they ask a lot about the kidnapped Israelis.

The Israeli paper Ha'aretz reported the abduction, but the US media did
not. Ha'aretz wrote, "For the first time since the disengagement from
the Gaza Strip last year, IDF special forces entered the border area of
Rafah last night and arrested two Palestinian brothers ... During the
operation, which took place under cover of darkness, the IDF forces
withdrew immediately after the capture of the two militants ... An IDF
spokesman described the raid as a "surgical operation"...


[4] US/ISRAEL AGGRESSION. While Israeli attacks within its vast prison
camp of Gaza continue, the Israel government last week attacked Lebanon.
They've killed more than two hundred civilians in a week of their their
two-front war.

It's important to recognize what the US media ignore or deny, that
Israel would not act without the approval of the US administration. One
year ago the Israeli army was poised to attack Lebanon, and the US SOS
forbade it. This year, SOS Rice seems to have lost out in the
bureaucratic wars to a Rumsfeld-Cheney faction, and the US position was
expressed by the president's flack, "The US is not making military
decisions for Israel" -- which is to say that it is, and the decision is
to let the Israeli military loose. The Israelis, having won the USG
license for war, couldn't resist pointing out publicly that they now
could reject Rice's advice.

This Israeli aggression, which threatens a general war in the ME, is
part of the long-term US policy to dominate the center of world energy
production; for Israel, it's part of the long-term strategy to annex the
West Bank, including its water resources, and the Jordan valley. Israeli
PM Olmert declared a policy of "convergence" ("consolidation";
"realignment" -- the notion may be conveyed by the German term
"Gleichshaltung"...) in the 2006 election, which meant an incorporation
of illegal Jewish settlements with the state of Israel. As his approval
ratings declined to Bushian levels, the crying up of the terrorist enemy
and the destruction of Arab opposition are meant to shore up his
government in an Israel under social strain: e.g., Israel has a higher
percentage of poor that any other industrialized country.


[5] ISRAELI POLITICS OF WAR. Noam Chomsky says that Israel should be
regarded as a militarized outpost of the United States. It is an army
with a state, rather than a state with an army. Ran Ha Cohen writes from
Israel that "The Army Wants Action":

[When Hezbollah] managed to kidnap two Israeli soldiers into Lebanon ...
the [Israeli] army took the odd decision to send a tank into Lebanon to
get them. Just 70 meters north of the border fence, the Merkava – "one
of the most protected tanks in the world" – drove over a powerful bomb
and was completely destroyed. All four crew members were killed
instantly. It then took the army more than 12 hours to extricate the
wreck and recover the bodies, under heavy fire in which yet another
soldier was killed, bringing the total number of Israeli casualties in
the incident to eight. The strongest army in the Middle East seems
unable to protect its own soldiers, let alone Israel's citizens. A sane
state would send its talented chief of staff home; Israel, instead, sent
him to wreak havoc in Lebanon.

This was just one in a long series of humiliations for Israel's
military. In summer 2000 it had to admit its defeat in Lebanon and
withdraw from its southern part, which even Ben Gurion had considered a
desirable "natural border"of the Jewish state. The Second Intifada,
initiated by PM Ehud Barak just a few months after that withdrawal, was
intended, among other things, to reconcile the army by giving it a fresh
playground. The reoccupation of the entire West Bank in the bloody days
of 2002 – "Operation Defense Shield" – looked like a happy return to the
good old days of the military as the nation's pride. With former
generals Barak, Sharon, Ben Eliezer, and Mofaz playing musical chairs
with the seats of prime minister and/or minister of defense, the
military enjoyed unlimited resources and political power.

But once again, just like in Lebanon, the army failed. Terrorizing the
Palestinians and the total destruction of their physical, social, and
political infrastructure were carried out very efficiently, but failed
to provide security to Israel's citizens; and presumably that's what
armies are for. Yielding to popular pressure, PM Sharon was forced to
endorse the construction of a fence to stop suicide bombers from
entering Israel. In his strategic ingenuity, Sharon came up with the
brilliant idea of erecting the Wall as deep as possible in Palestinian
territory, ensuring that the barrier would not be the beginning of the
end of Israel's colonialist project, but rather perpetuate and entrench
it even further.

Unlike its illegality, the effectiveness of the Wall is controversial:
on the one hand it makes access of suicide-bombers into Israel more
difficult. On the other hand, the enormous land confiscations,
dispossession, strangulation, and pauperization that go hand-in-hand
with its construction ensure unlimited supply of desperate Palestinians
with very little to lose. At any rate, for the Israeli army the Wall is
bad news. It reduces the brave fighters into bored jailers and
gatekeepers, whose most glorious mission is the daily – or rather
nightly – incursions into Palestinian bedrooms. What will the aging
generals tell their grandchildren? That their greatest achievement was
to deceive the Supreme Court in order to rob a few more acres of
Palestinian land? As Amira Hass shows, the spearhead of the occupation
has now been relegated to clerks and bureaucrats, responsible for
Israel's demographic policy of ethnic cleansing. Generals love the color
red – as in blood, not as in red tape.

The military defeat in Gaza was yet another blow to the army. Again, it
failed to protect the citizens and stop the homemade Qassam missiles.
Not only did it have to pull out of the Strip last summer, it was also
forced to evict settlers – the soldiers' brethren-in-arms for 40 years,
the civilian corps of the army.

The Palestinian elections and the victory of Hamas sounded like
excellent news for the army, but the Israeli elections were probably too
much to take. During the campaign, all political parties pledged to cut
Israel's enormous defense budget; and what is worse, in the new
government both Prime Minister Olmert and Minister of Defense Peretz are
not army veterans, an almost unprecedented state of affairs in the past
one-and-a-half decades.

At last, the humiliated, frustrated military took command. It had been
demanding a massive attack on Gaza long before the Israeli soldier was
kidnapped. The government seemed somewhat reluctant. But the ground was
consistently prepared by a calculated escalation: repeated killing of
civilians and children, assassination of a top PA official, even making
so-called "arrests" in Gaza for the first time since the pullout.
Following the kidnap (June 26), the cabinet could not stop the army
anymore. The chief of staff revealed the true relations between the army
in charge and its obedient cabinet, saying he "supported" the cabinet's
policy not to "surrender to blackmail" and not to negotiate with the
soldier's kidnappers; as Akiva Eldar of Ha'aretz (July 4) correctly
wondered, what if the cabinet changed its mind? Would Soldier No. 1
announce he does not "support" it anymore? Using a similar vocabulary,
Amir Oren reported in Ha'aretz (July 3) that "The Israel Defense Forces
said it will not support a deal that would release terrorists…. The army
would be willing to release individuals who are being held under the
Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance," etc. Israel's elected government
enjoys a certain amount of freedom, but the army dictates just how much.

Olmert and Peretz by now probably are convinced that the army is doing
just what they always wanted. They also hope that a macho image is just
what the Israeli voter wants, especially from politicians who lack
military experience – precisely the reasoning behind Shimon Peres'
pounding of Lebanon in 1996, leading to his defeat in the general
elections soon after.

Israel's chief of staff, whose analytic capacities are as inspiring as
his moral faculties, termed the kidnap and attack on his soldiers near
Gaza "an act of terror." PM Olmert termed the identical kidnap by
Hezbollah two weeks later "an act of war." Guerrilla attacks on soldiers
are never "terror," but kidnapping soldiers – or civilians – and holding
them as bargaining chips is banned by international law. Israel,
however, is in no position to complain: this is precisely what it did
with a group of Lebanese nationals, detained in Israel for many years as
bargaining chips; even the Supreme Court did not dare face the military,
and upheld this breach of international law. Despite official denial,
the arrest of some 60 Hamas members following the kidnap, including
several ministers, serves the same illegal function.

The background of Hezbollah's illegitimate kidnap, however, is
different: six weeks before (May 26), Israel assassinated a senior Jihad
member, Mahmoud al-Majzub, by a booby-trapped car in Sidon. When Syria
assassinates a political leader in Lebanon, the whole world is in an
uproar; when Israel does the same, the only one daring to react is
Hezbollah, by an attack on northern Israel, killing one soldier. There
was nothing unusual about that either; the skirmish fell well within the
quiet understandings. Very unusual was Israel's disproportional
response: "an exceptionally harsh Israeli reaction," which the military
explicitly described as "a change of policy" (Amos Harel in Ha'aretz,
May 29), hitting front-line Hezbollah bases all along the border. The
Israeli army later boasted that Hezbollah was "caught by surprise" or
had even "fallen into a trap," and that it would now think twice before
acting. Hezbollah, apparently, thought twice and thrice, and decided to
make it clear that the rules of the game cannot be changed unilaterally.

What is Israel's running wild likely to achieve? Not much. As for the
kidnapped soldiers, any action other than negotiations is gambling with
their lives, as their families now start to say out louder. As for the
missiles shot from Gaza, the military could not stop them when it was
sitting inside the Strip – obviously, it cannot stop them by casual
incursions and air bombing. As for Lebanon, the disproportional Israeli
reaction made Hezbollah fire missiles at the whole of northern Israel,
both at communities that had enjoyed relative quiet since 2000 and at
places that had never experienced any Lebanese missiles before. The army
now turns to Israel's citizens, begging them to show restraint and
endurance while they are bombed – as if the citizens are supposed to be
there for the army rather than vice versa.

As often in war time, most citizens do flock together behind the army,
no matter how much they suffer. What Israel fails to grasp is that this
simple logic applies to the other side as well: devastating Gaza will
only increase support for the Palestinian militants, just like Hezbollah
being the only power that effectively fights Israel is not likely to
strengthen the weak Lebanese government, whose vested interest and legal
obligation is indeed to disarm Hezbollah. So in a final analysis, the
main achievements of the Israeli brutality will be more and more
bloodshed and devastation on both sides, and a lot of entertainment for
the bored Israeli military. When they get tired of playing (and/or
losing), Israel will negotiate a prisoner swap and return to the status
quo ante, in Gaza as well as in Lebanon, till next time. For many
families on both sides, this will be too late.

[Those are the views of Ran HaCohen, writing from Israel. One hopes that
his conclusion is correct, because it's certainly possible to imagine
how the present Israeli aggression would bring on a general Mideast war,
ranging Syria and Iran against the US and Israel.]


[6] ONGOING ATTACKS. In attacks this weekend, Israel bombed roads,
bridges, radar installations, and a lighthouse near the campus of the
American University of Beirut. The Shia political group Hezbollah
responded by firing more rockets into northern Israel. The Washington
Post's Anthony Shadid reports from Beirut on Sunday as follows:

"In a war that has witnessed an escalation each day, the asymmetrical
nature of the conflict was laid bare Saturday: For each attack by
Hezbollah since it captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid,
Israel has inflicted a far greater price. It has systematically
dismantled the country's infrastructure, displaced thousands of
residents and instilled a new sense of foreboding and fear in the
now-deserted streets of this brash, confident city still shadowed by the
legacy of Lebanon's 15-year civil war."

Hezbollah has counterattacked: missiles have hit the city of Haifa, some
25 miles south of the border, killing at least nine and injuring more,
and a Hezbollah weapon -- perhaps an unmanned plane -- disabled an
Israeli navy missile frigate, killing four sailors. Israel immediately
charged that the weapon was an Iranian missile, which Hezbollah denied,

On Saturday's two Hezbollah missile barrages hit the Israeli coastal
resort of Tiberias, which is about 20 miles south of the border with
Lebanon, wounding a handful. Israel, meanwhile, killed at least 16
civilians, many of them children, in an air strike on a convoy
evacuating refugees from a southern Lebanese town. The military said the
killing of innocents was a mistake, but blamed Hezbollah for operating
in civilian areas.

In Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: "The Zionist
regime behaves like Hitler."

Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is described by WP correspondent Robin
Wright as "A cross between Ayatollah Khomeini and Che Guevera [sic]."


[7] MORE OPEN MIKES, PLEASE. There's an increasingly chilly relationship
between the Russian and US governments at this week's G-8 summit. The
U.S. isn't letting Russia into the World Trade Organization. At a testy
news conference yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said about
Iran, "We will not participate in any crusades, in any holy alliances,"
and was distinctly less supportive of Israel's military actions than
Bush was. "Escalation of violence, in our opinion, will not yield
positive results," Putin said, perhaps to the surprise of the citizens
of Grozny. [Slate]


[8] AMERICAN POLITICS OF WAR. Justin Raimondo writes as follows on the 
Libertarian website <antiwar.com>:

Unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the presence of a
substantial American force in the midst of Mesopotamia, the Israelis are
the tip of an American spear aimed at Syria and Iran. And Israel's amen
corner in Washington and the media are doggedly pushing the talking
point that these two spokes on the "axis of evil" are churning the
Lebanese waters. MSNBC assures us that Iran "created" Hezbollah:
knowledgeable analysts can only laugh at this agitprop – but then they
aren't cited in this piece. Only a former Israeli general is.

Hezbollah, of course, was "created," not by Iran, but by the Israeli
invasion of 1982. The group gained prestige and adherents as it drove
the invading Israelis back over the border and set up an elaborate
network of social service organizations, standing candidates for office
and entering the Lebanese Parliament. The mere sight of an Arab entity
successfully defying Israel, and not only living to tell the tale but
also prospering, is impermissible: Russian President Vladimir Putin was
not alone in saying that there was more to the Israeli agenda than
merely getting back their captured – um, I mean "kidnapped" – soldiers....

The neoconservative ideologues, who have been the radical vanguard of
the War Party all along, [believe that the Cheney & Rumsfeld faction has
prevailed against the Department of State], which is why Richard Perle
recently took [SOS Rice] on in the Washington Post. The Condi faction
temporarily gained the upper hand when they came out with a policy on
Iran that had been worked on in secret and took the road of negotiation
rather than outright military confrontation and "regime change."

The Israeli answer: invade Lebanon, force the issue, and go for the
throat. With the Israel lobby going full-bore and the propaganda mills
churning, the invasion undermines the Rice faction and puts the issue of
regime-change back on the administration's agenda. While that change of
regime will, initially, be limited to southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah
operates a de facto independent state, it will eventually – the neocons
hope – extend to the whole of the country, topple Bashar al-Assad in
Syria – and, eventually, spill over into Iran.

Dan Rather said on Chris Matthews' Sunday show that the road is littered
with the corpses of those who underestimated Dick Cheney, and the
reassertion of the neoconservative voice within this administration – a
voice that many thought had been nearly stilled by the grotesque failure
of our Iraqi disaster – is a testament to the validity of his thesis.

The neocons' comeback is made possible by the Democrats' complete
prostration before the Israeli offensive. [Senator Joe] Biden's babbling
that our lack of allies has crippled our ability to mediate the Middle
East conflict is completely wrong – and beside the point, in any case. 
To begin with, all the Arab ... regimes – the Saudis, the Egyptians, the 
Jordanians, the dictators, the kings, the petty tyrants and emirs – are 
taking the line that Hezbollah, and not Israel, is to blame. The 
Lebanese, they say, have brought this on themselves and now have to bear 
the consequences of Hassan Nasrallah's actions...

The question boils down to this: can the Israelis win a war with
Hezbollah without American intervention? The answer, clearly, is no:
look what happened last time. The Americans, lured into Beirut, suffered
241 casualties – after bombing Beirut's suburbs – and Reagan wisely
withdrew. Israel, in the end, was driven out. The neocons are determined
that, this time, the Americans will not only stay – they'll go for Damascus.

The call for American military intervention is bound to come up, rather
shortly, and get louder as the long "precision" bombing of the Lebanese
continues. The Israelis will pound Lebanon in a display of U.S.-backed
military power, and the only debate in Washington will be over to what
extent we ought to intervene, rather than whether we ought to get
involved at all.

In the end, some combination of UN-NATO-American military intervention
will do for the Israelis what they could never accomplish on their own:
neutralize all opposition to their conquest of Palestine coming from the
Levant. The "debate" in Washington is only over how to achieve that
goal: the Democrats say we have to do it "multilaterally," and the
Republicans, with Jacksonian disdain, say we don't have to answer to
anybody..."

[That's Justin Raimondo from <antiwar.com>. I don't agree with all his
views, and it's notoriously difficult to predict political events, but
that prognosis seems dangerously possible.]


[9] US LIBERALISM. It's clear where the US media stands however. For
example the New Republic magazine carries an article this week by
Michael B. Oren, who recently published a pro-Israeli account of the
Arab Israeli war of June 1967; his article is titled "WHY ISRAEL SHOULD
BOMB SYRIA."

And what's the official opposition party's position on the US/Israeli
aggression in the ME? Here's what the leading liberal senator in the
Democratic party, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, had to say:

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold today defended Israel's right to protect itself
amid the escalating conflict along its borders, saying, "I don't think
any country is going to let their soldiers be kidnapped, transported,
killed ... without a serious response."
Feingold said he would not second-guess "whether that response was
exactly as it should be."
Said Feingold: "My hope would be that Israel would use as much restraint
as possible .... It's in Israel's interest and the interests of peace.
But I do think Israel has not only a right but also a responsibility to
respond to the Hezbollah attack."
Feingold posted a statement on his Web site Friday saying, "I stand
firmly with the people of Israel and their government as they defend
themselves against these outrageous attacks."


[10] REAL OPPOSITION. Some 1,000 protestors joined Sunday evening in a
rally in Tel Aviv to protest the IDF strikes in Southern Lebanon. Police
have arrested three of the protesters claiming they were holding a
demonstration without a permit.

The protesters ... chanted slogans such as "Olmert agreed with Bush: War
and occupation." "Stop the war monstrosity," and "Say no to the brutal
bombardments on Gaza." They also accused Defense Minister Amir Peretz of
murdering children in Gaza, and recited: "Peretz, don't worry, we'll be
seeing you at The Hague."

"They keep telling us that there is a consensus in support of the war,
and that's not true. They keep telling the citizens that this is the
only way, and I think that there is another way," said Abeer Kopty of
Mossawa, The Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel.

The organizations Ta'ayush, Yesh Gvul, The Women's Coalition for Peace
and other left-wing groups have joined forces "to voice a different
opinion against the war and in favor of negotiations," she explained.

Eitan Lerner, who took part in the rally, said: "Israel is entering
another cycle of fighting and continues the foolishness of exaggerated
aggression. I came here to protest because there's a link between
starving and oppressing the Palestinians and the bombings in Lebanon."

"It's true that what Hizbullah did was unacceptable, but Israel is
overreacting. Since when is the entire population to blame for all
this?" he asked.

Rela Mazali from the New Profile organization explained: "This is a
stupid, unnecessary and evil war. Our leaders could have prevented it.
eventually the hostages will be released through negotiations, but
hundreds will be killed along the way in Lebanon, and I don't know how
many will die here. I think that we must make our voice heard."

Manal Amuri from Jerusalem called on the Israeli government to hold
talks with Hamas and Hizbullah. "The Israeli aggression leads to an
overall war no one wants. I think that Israel should negotiate with
Hizbullah and Hamas and release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for
the hostages. This way this story will come to an end."

"What Israel is doing now resulted in the death of civilians, innocent
children, and it serves no purpose except for the government's
vindictiveness. I think it's good we're showing that there are Arab and
Jewish citizens in Israel who oppose the war."

MK Dov Hanin of Hadash [said]: "We are protesting against the second
Lebanon war. The war is a disaster for Israelis, Palestinians and
Lebanese. We call for the secession of this war, for the secession of
harm to Israeli and Lebanese civilians, we demand an immediate ceasefire
and the commencement of negotiations which is the only alternative to a
catastrophic regional deterioration."

To the question that no minister has expressed opposition to the war he
said: "Also during the 1982 Lebanon war Hadash was the only one that
opposed the war from day one and also in the second Lebanon war. I am
sure that opposition to the war will swiftly intensify."

"I regret that Amir Peretz has stepped into the shoes of Mofaz; I regret
that no member of the Labor and Meretz parties voiced opposition to the
war."

Noa Levi of Tel Aviv said: "The choice of whether to escalate the
situation or not is in our hands and the question of saving lives or not
is also in our hands: there is no military solution. Only negotiations."

Lavi Zeitner supported her position: "I am not for violence, not for
Hizbullah. But also not for bombarding a whole country." [YNET]


[11] ISRAEL'S "RIGHT TO EXIST." Many American liberals, while not mired
in the ignorance that seems to engulf Sen. Feingold (and is encouraged
by the corporate media) nevertheless are troubled by the notion that
there may be some justice in Israel's position, because their enemies in
the Middle East "deny their right to exist."

Putting aside for a moment that no state has a right tot kill people
because of what they say or think, the assertion of a government's
"right to exist" is a peculiar position for any American to take. Our
government was founded on the principle that no state has a right to exist:

"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of [securing human
rights], it is in the right of the people to alter or abolish it," says
the Declaration of Independence.

Although we may tend to forget it, this principle has been clear
throughout our history. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln pointed
out that a country belongs to the people who inhabit it. "Whenever they
shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their
constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to
dismember or overthrow it."

The United States began by overthrowing a government that had forfeited
its right to exist -- the Declaration of Independence is a bill of
particulars, meant to show how that had happened. A government has a
right to exist, according to American doctrine, only when it works to
"establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty." If it does not work towards these things -- especially if it
actively works against them -- it has no such right.

In the present case we must ask if the government of Israel satisfies
this condition in regard to the people it rules over -- some ten million
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

The answer is obvious. Like the government of the former apartheid state
of South Africa, it works in the interests of only a minority of those
inhabitants -- and is destructive of the rights of the others -- so in
neither case can the state be said to have a right to exist.

The Declaration continues, apparently cogently: "Prudence indeed will
dictate that governments long established should not be changed for
light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown
that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than
to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Finally, when it come to Israel, there's a further difficulty. All
states, whether democracies or dictatorships, are the states of their
inhabitants, as Lincoln noted -- except the state of Israel. By law,
Israel declares itself the state not of its inhabitants but of the
Jewish people world-wide. Does such an essentially racist state have a
right to exist not accorded to other states?


[12] THE OTHER OCCUPATION. Daniel Ellsberg writes in Znet:

A joint resolution referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
last week by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) calls for the withdrawal of
all American military forces from Iraq by Dec. 31. Boxer's
"redeployment" bill cites in its preamble a January poll finding that
64% of Iraqis believe that crime and violent attacks will decrease if
the U.S. leaves Iraq within six months, 67% believe that their
day-to-day security will increase if the U.S. withdraws and 73% believe
that factions in parliament will cooperate more if the U.S. withdraws.

If that's true, then what are we doing there? If Iraqis don't believe
that we're making things better or safer, what does that say about the
legitimacy of prolonged occupation, much less permanent American bases
in Iraq (foreseen by 80% of Iraqis polled)? What does it mean for
continued American armored patrols such as the one last November in
Haditha, which, we now learn, led to the deaths of a Marine and 24
unarmed civilians?


[13] THE LIBERAL PRESS. The NYT, in an editorial on the last half-decade
in Sunday's edition, discovers to its immense surprise that "It is only
now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush
administration's response to the terror attacks is becoming clear --
Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin
Laden than with expanding presidential power." That's Claude Rains
discovering gambling in the back room of Rick's Cafe Americain in
Casablanca...


[14] AND HERE ON THE PRAIRIE. Regarding our own feeble purchase on the
policies of the federal government, this week our representatives in
Congress cast some interesting votes: Representative Johnson voted to
end the federal requirement that certain jurisdictions provide voting
materials in languages other than English; Senator Durbin voted to allow
police to seize citizens' firearms in official disaster areas, such as
post-Katrina New Orleans, while Senator Obama voted (it seems to me
correctly) to prohibit it.

[I'm now so exhausted by the effort of finding anything about the fake
liberal Obama to praise that I'll have to go lie down. I'll end the
program with a recording.]


[15] THE MURDER OF A NATION. Noam Chomsky was interviewed on Democracy
Now! last Friday:

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined on the phone right now by Noam Chomsky,
professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, author of dozens of books. His latest is Failed States:
The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. In May, he traveled to
Beirut, where he met, among others, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan
Nasrallah. He joins us on the phone from Massachusetts. We welcome you to
Democracy Now!

NOAM CHOMSKY: Hi, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Well, can you talk about
what is happening now, both in Lebanon and Gaza?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, of course, I have no inside information, other than
what's available to you and listeners. What's happening in Gaza, to
start with that -- well, basically the current stage of what's going on
-- there's a lot more -- begins with the Hamas election, back the end of
January. Israel and the United States at once announced that they were
going to punish the people of Palestine for voting the wrong way in a
free election. And the punishment has been severe.

At the same time, it's partly in Gaza, and sort of hidden in a way, but
even more extreme in the West Bank, where Olmert announced his
annexation program, what’s euphemistically called “convergence” and
described here often as a “withdrawal,” but in fact it’s a formalization
of the program of annexing the valuable lands, most of the resources,
including water, of the West Bank and cantonizing the rest and
imprisoning it, since he also announced that Israel would take over the
Jordan Valley. Well, that proceeds without extreme violence or nothing
much said about it.

Gaza, itself, the latest phase, began on June 24. It was when Israel
abducted two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother. We don't know
their names. You don’t know the names of victims. They were taken to
Israel, presumably, and nobody knows their fate. The next day, something
happened, which we do know about, a lot. Militants in Gaza, probably
Islamic Jihad, abducted an Israeli soldier across the border. That’s
Corporal Gilad Shalit. And that's well known; first abduction is not.
Then followed the escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza, which I don’t
have to repeat. It’s reported on adequately.

The next stage was Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers, they
say on the border. Their official reason for this is that they are
aiming for prisoner release. There are a few, nobody knows how many.
Officially, there are three Lebanese prisoners in Israel. There's
allegedly a couple hundred people missing. Who knows where they are?

But the real reason, I think it's generally agreed by analysts, is that
-- I’ll read from the Financial Times, which happens to be right in
front of me. “The timing and scale of its attack suggest it was partly
intended to reduce the pressure on Palestinians by forcing Israel to
fight on two fronts simultaneously.” David Hearst, who knows this area
well, describes it, I think this morning, as a display of solidarity
with suffering people, the clinching impulse.

It's a very -- mind you -- very irresponsible act. It subjects Lebanese
to possible -- certainly to plenty of terror and possible extreme
disaster. Whether it can achieve any result, either in the secondary
question of freeing prisoners or the primary question of some form of
solidarity with the people of Gaza, I hope so, but I wouldn't rank the
probabilities very high.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Noam Chomsky, in the commercial press here the last day,
a lot of the focus has been pointing toward Iran and Syria as basically
the ones engineering much of what's going on now in terms of the upsurge
of fighting in Lebanon. Your thoughts on these analyses that seem to
sort of downplay the actual resistance movement going on there and
trying to reduce this once again to pointing toward Iran?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the fact is that we have no information about that,
and I doubt very much that the people who are writing it have any
information. And frankly, I doubt that U.S. intelligence has any
information. It's certainly plausible. I mean, there's no doubt that
there are connections, probably strong connections, between Hezbollah
and Syria and Iran, but whether those connections were instrumental in
motivating these latest actions, I don't think we have the slightest
idea. You can guess anything you’d like. It's a possibility. In fact,
even a probability. But on the other hand, there's every reason to
believe that Hezbollah has its own motivations, maybe the ones that
Hearst and the Financial Times and others are pointing to. That seems
plausible, too. Much more plausible, in fact.

AMY GOODMAN: There was even some reports yesterday that said that
Hezbollah might try to send the Israeli soldiers that it had captured to
Iran.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Israel actually claims that it has concrete
evidence that that's what was going to happen. That's why it's
attempting to blockade both the sea and bomb the airport.

NOAM CHOMSKY: They are claiming that. That's true. But I repeat, we
don't have any evidence. Claims by a state that's carrying out the
military attacks don't really amount to very much, in terms of
credibility. If they have evidence, it would be interesting to see it.
And in fact, it might happen. Even if it does happen, it won't prove
much. If Hezbollah, wherever they have the prisoners, the soldiers, if
they decide that they can't keep them in Lebanon because of the scale of
Israeli attacks, they might send them somewhere else. I’m skeptical that
Syria or Iran would accept them at this point, or even if they can get
them there, but they might want to.

AMY GOODMAN: ... I wanted to ask you about the comment of the Israeli
ambassador to the United Nations. He defended Israel's actions as a
justified response. This is Dan Gillerman.

DAN GILLERMAN: As we sit here during these very difficult days, I urge
you and I urge my colleagues to ask yourselves this question: What would
do you if your countries found themselves under such attacks, if your
neighbors infiltrated your borders to kidnap your people, and if
hundreds of rockets were launched at your towns and villages? Would you
just sit back and take it, or would you do exactly what Israel is doing
at this very minute?

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the
United Nations. Noam Chomsky, your response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: He was referring to Lebanon, rather than Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: He was.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. Well, he's correct that hundreds of rockets have
been fired, and naturally that has to be stopped. But he didn't mention,
or maybe at least in this comment, that the rockets were fired after the
heavy Israeli attacks against Lebanon, which killed -- well, latest
reports, maybe 60 or so people and destroyed a lot of infrastructure. As
always, things have precedence, and you have to decide which was the
inciting event. In my view, the inciting event in the present case,
events, are those that I mentioned -- the constant intense repression;
plenty of abductions; plenty of atrocities in Gaza; the steady takeover
of the West Bank, which, in effect, if it continues, is just the murder
of a nation, the end of Palestine; the abduction on June 24 of the two
Gaza civilians; and then the reaction to the abduction of Corporal
Shalit. And there's a difference, incidentally, between abduction of
civilians and abduction of soldiers. Even international humanitarian law
makes that distinction.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what that distinction is?

NOAM CHOMSKY: If there's a conflict going on, aside physical war, not in
a military conflict going on, abduction -- if soldiers are captured,
they are to be treated humanely. But it is not a crime at the level of
capture of civilians and bringing them across the border into your own
country. That's a serious crime. And that's the one that's not reported.
And, in fact, remember that -- I mean, I don’t have to tell you that
there are constant attacks going on in Gaza, which is basically a
prison, huge prison, under constant attack all the time: economic
strangulation, military attack, assassinations, and so on. In comparison
with that, abduction of a soldier, whatever one thinks about it, doesn't
rank high in the scale of atrocities.

AMY GOODMAN: ... Finally, Noam Chomsky, right now industrial world
leaders gathered in St. Petersburg for the G8 meeting. What role does
the U.S. have in this?

NOAM CHOMSKY: In the G8 meeting?

AMY GOODMAN: No. What role -- they're just gathered together -- in this,
certainly the issue of Lebanon, Gaza, the Middle East is going to
dominate that discussion. But how significant is the U.S. in this?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think it will probably be very much like the UN
resolution that you mentioned ... the veto of the UN resolution is
standard. That goes back decades. The U.S. has virtually alone been
blocking the possibility of diplomatic settlement, censure of Israeli
crimes and atrocities. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the UN
vetoed several resolutions right away, calling for an end to the
fighting and so on, and that was a hideous invasion. And this continues
through every administration. So I presume it will continue at the G8
meetings.

The United States regards Israel as virtually a militarized offshoot,
and it protects it from criticism or actions and supports passively and,
in fact, overtly supports its expansion, its attacks on Palestinians,
its progressive takeover of what remains of Palestinian territory, and
its acts to, well, actually realize a comment that Moshe Dayan made back
in the early ’70s when he was responsible for the Occupied Territories.
He said to his cabinet colleagues that we should tell the Palestinians
that we have no solution for you, that you will live like dogs, and
whoever will leave will leave, and we'll see where that leads. That's
basically the policy. And I presume the U.S. will continue to advance
that policy in one or another fashion.

			* * * * * * * * *

YOU'VE BEEN LISTENING to "TELLING TIME: ADDITIONS TO THE CORPORATE NEWS"
on W.E.F.T.-Champaign. I'm Carl Estabrook, and we're telling stories
from the foreign press, blogs, and other alternative media, as well as
stories that have been overlooked or downplayed in the media owned by
big business.  I'm happy to fill requests for sources and references.
Email me at <cge at shout.net>. ###

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	109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
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