Folks–I am continuing to forward frequent reports on the Israel/Lebanon situation because it seems the mainstream media reporting has been rather slanted. The following (via Ed Pearl) is from the Christian Science Monitor, a pretty middleoftheroad source, and then a report from Britain’s Independent..
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14323.htm
Hizbullah’s attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon
By Anders Strindberg
08/01/06 “Christian Science Monitor” — — NEW YORK – As pundits and
policymakers scramble to explain events in Lebanon, their conclusions are
virtually unanimous: Hizbullah created this crisis. Israel is defending
itself. The underlying problem is Arab extremism.
Sadly, this is pure analytical nonsense. Hizbullah’s capture of two
Israeli soldiers on July 12 was a direct result of Israel’s silent but
unrelenting aggression against Lebanon, which in turn is part of a
six-decades long Arab-Israeli conflict.
Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May
2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored “blue line” on an
almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah’s military
doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire
Katyusha rockets into Israel only in response to Israeli attacks on
Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah’s leadership; this indeed has been the
pattern.
In the process of its violations, Israel has terrorized the general
population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians.
This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was
killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in
southern Lebanon. Israel has assassinated its enemies in the streets of
Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms area, while
refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that continue to kill and
cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than six years after the war
supposedly ended. What peace did Hizbullah shatter?
Hizbullah’s capture of the soldiers took place in the context of this
ongoing conflict, which in turn is fundamentally shaped by realities in
the Palestinian territories. To the vexation of Israel and its allies,
Hizbullah – easily the most popular political movement in the Middle East
– unflinchingly stands with the Palestinians.
Since June 25, when Palestinian fighters captured one Israeli soldier and
demanded a prisoner exchange, Israel has killed more than 140
Palestinians. Like the Lebanese situation, that flare-up was detached from
its wider context and was said to be “manufactured” by the enemies of
Israel; more nonsense proffered in order to distract from the apparently
unthinkable reality that it is the manner in which Israel was created, and
the ideological premises that have sustained it for almost 60 years, that
are the core of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.
Once the Arabs had rejected the UN’s right to give away their land and to
force them to pay the price for European pogroms and the Holocaust, the
creation of Israel in 1948 was made possible only by ethnic cleansing and
annexation. This is historical fact and has been documented by Israeli
historians, such as Benny Morris. Yet Israel continues to contend that it
had nothing to do with the Palestinian exodus, and consequently has no
moral duty to offer redress.
For six decades the Palestinian refugees have been refused their right to
return home because they are of the wrong race. “Israel must remain a
Jewish state,” is an almost sacral mantra across the Western political
spectrum. It means, in practice, that Israel is accorded the right to be
an ethnocracy at the expense of the refugees and their descendants, now
close to 5 million.
Is it not understandable that Israel’s ethnic preoccupation profoundly
offends not only Palestinians, but many of their Arab brethren? Yet rather
than demanding that Israel acknowledge its foundational wrongs as a first
step toward equality and coexistence, the Western world blithely insists
that each and all must recognize Israel’s right to exist at the
Palestinians’ expense.
Western discourse seems unable to accommodate a serious, as opposed to
cosmetic concern for Palestinians’ rights and liberties: The Palestinians
are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the Negroes who
refuse to sit in the back of the bus.
By what moral right does anyone tell them to be realistic and get over
themselves? That it is too much of a hassle to right the wrongs committed
against them? That the front of the bus must remain ethnically pure? When
they refuse to recognize their occupier and embrace their racial
inferiority, when desperation and frustration causes them to turn to
violence, and when neighbors and allies come to their aid – some for
reasons of power politics, others out of idealism – we are astonished that
they are all such fanatics and extremists.
The fundamental obstacle to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is
that we have given up on asking what is right and wrong, instead asking
what is “practical” and “realistic.” Yet reality is that Israel is a
profoundly racist state, the existence of which is buttressed by a
seemingly endless succession of punitive measures, assassinations, and
wars against its victims and their allies.
A realistic understanding of the conflict, therefore, is one that
recognizes that the crux is not in this or that incident or policy, but in
Israel’s foundational and per- sistent refusal to recognize the humanity
of its Palestinian victims. Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are driven by a
desire to “wipe out Jews,” as is so often claimed, but by a fundamental
sense of injustice that they will not allow to be forgotten.
These groups will continue to enjoy popular legitimacy because they
fulfill the need for someone – anyone – to stand up for Arab rights.
Israel cannot destroy this need by bombing power grids or rocket ramps. If
Israel, like its former political ally South Africa, has the capacity to
come to terms with principles of democracy and human rights and accept
egalitarian multiracial coexistence within a single state for Jews and
Arabs, then the foundation for resentment and resistance will have been
removed. If Israel cannot bring itself to do so, then it will continue to
be the vortex of regional violence.
Anders Strindberg, formerly a visiting professor at Damascus University,
Syria, is a consultant on Middle East politics working with European
government and law-enforcement agencies. He has also covered Syria,
Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories as a journalist since the 1990s,
primarily for European publications.
Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
***
The Independent – Jul 30, 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1204523.ece
Straw breaks ranks on Middle East in revolt against Blair
Francis Elliott in San Francisco and Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
The Cabinet revolt against Tony Blair intensified last night as Jack
Straw broke ranks to condemn Israel for causing “death and misery
to innocent civilians”.
As the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, arrived in Israel for
talks, her former British counterpart, Mr Straw, bitterly condemned
Israeli military tactics, saying they risked destroying the Lebanese
government.
The public attack is the most direct so far on the authority of the
Prime Minister, who still refuses to join calls for an immediate
ceasefire or rebuke Israel. Instead Mr Blair will today make the case for
pre-emptive strikes against Islamist militants when he addresses Rupert
Murdoch’s senior executives in California.
Downing Street had hoped that pressure on Mr Blair would be relieved by
his joint announcement of a peace plan in Washington on Friday with
President Bush. But he was looking increasingly isolated last night as the
depth of the anger among senior ministers at his failure to rebuke Israel
became clear.
Mr Straw, now Leader of the House, said that he grieved for innocent
Israelis but also the “10 times as many innocent Lebanese men, women
and children who have been killed by Israeli fire”, adding: “It’s very
difficult to understand the kind of military tactics used by Israel. These
are not surgical strikes but have caused death and misery to many innocent
civilians.”
In a TV interview last night Mr Blair denied that there had been a row in
Cabinet about his support for the US and Israel. “There was a perfectly
good discussion at Cabinet and it wasn’t a divisive discussion. What they
were saying is, let’s make sure with urgency we stop this situation which
is killing innocent people.” In another interview he also denied that he
wanted Israel to win the current conflict, and defended his relationship
with Mr Bush: “I’ll never apologise for Britain being a strong ally of the
US.”
An Israeli air strike yesterday on the southern village of Nmeiriya
killed a woman and six children, according to Lebanese medics.
Officials there say 750 people have been killed since the conflict began.
***
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