“Nasrallah will never forget the name Amir Peretz!”
The Junkies of War
By URI AVNERY
http://tinyurl.com/j39dh
Tel Aviv.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is
one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and
Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s hot new book The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org .
For me it was a moment of shocking revelation.
I was listening to one of the daily speeches of our Prime Minister. He
said: “We are a wonderful people!” He said: We have already won this war,
it is the greatest victory in the history of our state. He said: We have
changed the face of the Middle East. And more to that effect.
Well, I told myself, that’s Olmert.
I have known him since he was 20-something. Then, I was a member of
the Knesset, and Olmert was the book-carrier (literally) of another
member. Since then I have followed his career. He has never been anything
but a party functionary, a small-time politician special[ty] in
manipulations, a run-of-the-mill demagogue. On the way [he] changed
parties several times and served as a mayor with a grade of D minus, until
he climbed on the bandwagon of Ariel Sharon. More or less by accident he
was given the empty title of “Deputy Prime Minister”, and when Sharon
suffered his stroke, something happened that took Olmert too by surprise:
he became Prime Minister.
Throughout his career he has remained a complete cynic, basically a
right-winger but willing to pretend to be a liberal when faced with
leftists.
So, I told myself, this is just another cynical speech. But suddenly a
ghastly thought struck me: No, the man believes what he is saying!
Hard as it is to imagine, it seems that Olmert really believes that this
is a successful war. That he is winning. That he has radically changed
Israel’s situation. That he is building a New Middle East. That he is a
historic leader, far superior to Ariel Sharon (who, after all, was beaten
in Lebanon and who allowed Hizbullah to build up its arsenal of rockets).
That the longer he is allowed to go on with the war, the more his stature
in history will grow.
Ehud Olmert has obviously cut himself off from reality. He lives in a
bubble all by himself. His speeches show that he has a very real problem.
Of all the dangers facing Israel now, this is the most severe. Because
this man is deciding, quite simply, the fate of millions: who will die,
who will become a refugee, whose world will be shattered.
* * *
BUT OLMERT’S problem with megalomania is nothing compared to what has
happened to Amir Peretz.
Exactly nine months ago, after his election as Labor Party chairman,
Peretz made a speech in Tel-Aviv’s Rabin Square in which he revealed his
dream: that in the no-man’s land between Israel and the Gaza Strip a
football field will be built, and a match between the Israeli children of
Sderot and the Palestinian children of nearby Bet-Hanoun will take place.
An Israeli Martin Luther King.
Nine month’s later, a monster has been born to us.
In the Knesset election campaign, Peretz appeared as a social
revolutionary. He announced that he would change the face of Israeli
society, set new national priorities, cut billions from the military
budget and transfer them to education, welfare and measure to reduce the
glaring gap between rich and poor. As a veteran peace-lover, he would, of
course, achieve peace with the Palestinians and the entire Arab world.
This won him the votes of many citizens, including many who would normally
never consider voting for the Labor Party.
What followed is history. He seduced himself, when Olmert offered him the
Ministry of Defense. That was still Olmert the cynic. He knew, as we all
did, that Peretz was walking into a trap, that as a rank civilian without
serious military experience he would be easy prey for the generals. But
Peretz did not shrink back. The supreme aim of his life is to become Prime
Minister, and in order to become a credible candidate he believed that he
must present himself as a security expert.
Since then, Peretz has become a rabid warmonger. Not only does he endorse
all the demands of the generals, not only does he act as their spokesman –
he has also helped to push Israel into war, and since then he has been
demanding that it should continue, enlarge, widen, kill more, destroy
more, occupy more. He himself declared, “Nasrallah will never forget the
name Amir Peretz!” – like a spoilt child inscribing his name on a tourist
attraction.
At the moment, he is trying to be more extreme even than Olmert. While the
Prime Minister is afraid of continuing to advance, fearing that too many
casualties from the rockets and the battle on the ground might cloud the
brilliance of his victory, Peretz wants to reach the Litani River,
whatever the cost. There’s no other way – if one wants to become Prime
Minister, one has to walk over dead bodies.
Thus a monster has been born to us. Rosemary’s Baby.
* * *
TODAY, THE 25th day of the war, we can draw up an interim balance.
What were the aims? What are the results?
“To destroy Hizbullah”.
Who would have believed it, but on the 25th day Hizbullah is still
standing and fighting. A few thousand fighters against the fifth strongest
army in the world. Nobody speaks anymore about eliminating it. Not Olmert,
not Peretz, not even Dan Halutz – the third corner of this unholy
triangle.
“To weaken Hizbullah”.
That is a watered down version of the first aim. It is more convenient,
because it cannot be measured. After all, in any war both sides are
weakened. People are killed and wounded, arms are destroyed, installations
demolished. But while the Israeli army can mobilize another division and
another one, and the Americans are rushing more bombs to us, can Hizbullah
absorb such losses?
Nobody knows how many fighters the organization has lost. The Israeli army
distributes estimates, without being able to prove them. Lebanese speak
about far smaller numbers, and do not have any proof either.
But that is not the main thing. An organization like Hizbullah has no
problem in raising more and more volunteers for “holy war”. Be their
losses as they may, after the war the organization will train as many new
fighters as necessary. Their arsenals will also be replenished with new
weapons arriving from Iran and Syria. The border is long, it is impossible
to seal it.
“To push Hizbullah away from the border”.
That is the crumpled aim, after the two preceding ones were shown
to be unattainable. It, too, has not been realized yet, and never will be,
because it is also unattainable. Most Hizbullah fighters are local boys of
the South Lebanese towns and villages. They will continue to be there,
overtly or covertly. No international force can prevent that, and
certainly not the Lebanese Army.
The rockets can be moved further away. How many kilometers? Ten?
Twenty? That will not remove the threat from Nahariya, Haifa and
Tel-Aviv – especially since the range of the missiles is bound to grow
with time, when technologically more advanced types arrive.
“To kill Hassan Nasrallah”.
For the time being, so it seems, the report of his death was an
exaggeration, to quote Mark Twain. True, in a kind of parody of the
Entebbe exploit, Nasrallah was pulled out of a hospital in Baalbek,
but it was another Hassan Nasrallah. Oops.
In the meantime, the original Nasrallah is flourishing. Compared to the
kitschy speeches of Olmert, with their endless clich?s and the fist-
thumping on the table, the Hizbullah leader comes over as a sober speaker,
measured and mostly quite credible.
“To return to the Israeli army the power of deterrence”.
Nobody has any doubt that the Israeli army is a good, professional
army, capable of defeating regular armies. But this war proves that it is
not capable of achieving a military decision against an able guerilla
organization with determined fighters. If Hizbullah is alive and kicking
after 25 days, the deterrence power of the Israeli army has been weakened
– whatever happens from now on.
From this point of view, the war has harmed the security of Israel. It has
proved that the Israeli rear is exposed, that the Hizbullah fighters are
not inferior to the Israeli soldiers, that there is no de-luxe war, that
the Air Force cannot win without land forces. Not even in ideal
circumstances, when the other side has no anti-air defense to speak of.
Some comfort themselves with the thought that “the Arabs have seen
that we are crazy”. We react to a small local provocation with an orgy of
killing and destruction, destroying whole countries, a sort of national
amok. But running amok is not a policy. It does not solve any problem. It
is an uncontrollable reflex. It does not allow for straight thinking. It
even allows the other side to manipulate us with premeditated
provocations.
“Deploying an International Force along the border”.
That is a kind of emergency exit, after all the other aims have gone up in
smoke.
At the beginning of the war, Olmert himself strenuously objected to
such a force, because it would restrict the freedom of action of the
Israeli army. Clearly, no international force will dare to come, unless
there is a cease-fire in place and an agreement with Hizbullah has been
reached. Nobody wants to be exposed to cross-fire. Therefore, this force
will also have to serve Hizbullah’s interests, for fear of a guerilla war
starting against it. Have all the sacrifices been made for this?
“”We shall create a new situation in the Middle East”.
This aim has indeed been achieved – but not the way Olmert told himself
(and us).
The long-range results of the war are not immediately obvious. They
belong to the category defined by Bismarck as “imponderables” – things
that cannot be measured.
Every day on their TV screens tens of millions of Arabs and hundred of
millions of Muslims see the atrocious pictures of crushed babies, the
sights of the horrible destruction. These are deeply imprinted in the
consciousness of the masses and will leave behind them an accumulation of
anger and hatred that is far more dangerous than an arsenal of missiles.
In these 25 days, thousands of new suicide bombers have been created. And
as the stature of Nasrallah as the hero of the Arab world increases, so
the respect for the “moderate” Arab regimes hit new lows – the very
regimes that the US and Israel rely on for creating the New Middle East.
* * *
AFTER THE 25th day, the 26th will arrive, and so on and on. President
Bush, who pushed us into this war to start with, is now pushing us to
fight on (“Until the last Israeli soldier,” as the saying goes.) Like
Olmert, he lives in an imaginary world.
Bush, Olmert and their like can incite and draw the masses behind them,
until the call of “the Emperor is naked” finds receptive ears.
One of the most sickening sights of the war is the picture of the
international diplomats doing everything they can to enable Olmert & Co.
to go on with the war. The UN has long since become an agent of the White
House. Hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness are having a field day, while lives
are being destroyed and the dead buried on both sides of the border.
Olmert wants to “gain” as many days as possible for continued fighting.
What sort of gain is this? We are conquering South Lebanon as flies
conquer fly-paper. Generals present maps with impressive arrows to show
how Hizbullah is being pushed north. That might be convincing – if we were
talking about a front-line in a war with a regular army, as taught in
Staff College. But this is a different war altogether. In the conquered
area, Hizbullah people remain, and our soldiers are exposed to attacks of
the kind in which Hizbullah has excelled from its first day.
So we shall get to the Litani River. Beyond it, there is another river,
and another one. Lebanon has an abundance of rivers we can get to.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile for these two junkies, Olmert and Peretz,
to come down from their “high” and study the map.
—————
Agence France Presse – 8 August 2006
US public closely divided over Israel’s war with Hezbollah: poll
The traditionally pro-Israel US public is closely divided on the Jewish
state’s battle with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, a new poll showed.
Forty-six percent of Americans surveyed blame Israel and Hezbollah equally
for the conflict, whereas 39 percent blame Hezbollah alone, according to
the ABC News/Washington Post poll released late Monday.
The poll found Americans nearly evenly split on whether Israel’s intense
bombing of Lebanese targets to eliminate Hezbollah’s ability to launch
rocket barrages against Israeli targets was justified.
In the poll, 47 percent said Israel was justified in its bombing campaign,
against 48 percent who were opposed.
—
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“Our German forbearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said ‘maybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, ‘why didn’t you do something to stop all this?” –Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst of 27 years, referring to the actions and crimes of the Bush Administration
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