Israel's path to total war

[leftchick]

<snip>

Israel's path to total war
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

One of the most malignant aspects of the new chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict is the myth of Israel as the assaulted party, lavishly propagated by the White House and the infinite pro-Israel pundits in the US media, including the editors of the New York Times, who have labeled Israel's blatant aggression against the nation of Lebanon as "legally and morally justified".

Never mind that the rest of the world, including the European Union, does not share this perception of who is mainly at fault for the deadly cycle of violence that has gripped the Middle East again. The irony is that one can detect greater voices of dissent and opposition to Israel's massive, disproportionate response to the token kidnapping of a few of its soldiers than is the case in
the "pluralistic" US media, nowadays sheepishly toeing the official line.

<snip>

Gideon Levy in the liberal Israeli paper Haaretz has put it cogently: "In Gaza, a soldier is abducted from the army of a state that frequently abducts civilians from their homes and locks them up for years with or without a trial - but only we're allowed to do that. And only we're allowed to bomb civilian population centers."

The White House-led masterly mischaracterization of the chronology of events culminating in the widening war show how nicely adapted are the standards of public relations that serve the Israeli war machine, currently pressing hard to pave the road for a future attack on Iran, by either the US or Israel itself, without the fear of any retaliation through Lebanon, thus depriving Iran of one of its multiple lines of defense.

Little wonder, then, that the pro-Israeli pundits in Washington are wasting no time in pushing for an attack on Iran. "Why wait?" asks William Kristol of the Standard Weekly, rationalizing his warmongering bid in the form of "It is our war, too."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG18Ak02.html

[Atman]

1. Hey...there's that word, and it's used CORRECTLY!

Never mind that the rest of the world, including the European Union, does not share this perception of who is mainly at fault for the deadly cycle of violence that has gripped the Middle East again. The irony is that one can detect greater voices of dissent and opposition to Israel's massive, disproportionate response...than is the case in the "pluralistic" US media, nowadays sheepishly toeing the official line.

[Cronus Protagonist]

2. My guess is more than a few people here will find this anti-semitic

I find that they need to take the blinders off.

[leftchick]

3. it is reality

Nothing anti-semitic about it and hopefully some will learn.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

4. Weird.

But of course, assuming that the script for war on Iran began with the one-ton bombs on Gaza residential neighborhoods a few weeks ago, propelling Hezbollah inevitably into action, and the specter of wider war getting more and more imminent

This appears to be saying that the purpose of the Gaza offensive was to get Hezbollah involved?

[TahitiNut]

6. When a result (including a reaction) is clearly foreseeable ...

... it's difficult to reject the hypothesis that the result was at least part of the objective, particularly when the precipitating act(s) was clearly the result of the deliberations of supposedly rational people. While inductive, it is no less logical.

As an example, I refer to the outing of Valerie Plame by those who clearly had the wherewithal to understand that the impact would obliterate the viability of Brewster Jennings and Associates as a NOC and endanger those who acted under such cover in the near past. A rational person cannot reject the hypothesis that this was at least part of the objective. It was an unavoidably obvious result, totally and completely independent of how long it had been since Plame was active.

When the IDF bombed Gaza, the disproportionality of that official act had clear and unavoidably obvious consequences. "Reckless disregard" is not a defense of the 'collateral damage' resulting from actions undertaken by states.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

9. I don't think this *was* forseen.

This whole operation is just so out of character, in terms of its lack of objectives and obvious lack of military planning, for Israel to have forseen this and planned it.

[k_jerome]

5. I think this drivel is bigoted. But thats just me...

and a bunch of jews.

And the EU is a great source for opinions on Israel, what with all the genocide and all.

[bloom]

7. OP-ed in the New York Times - The Way We War

By ETGAR KERET
Published: July 18, 2006

...
“Tell me, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” I said, trying to quote Tali as precisely as I could. “We’re at war. People are getting killed. Missiles are falling on Tiberias and all you can think about is your car seat?”

The argument worked here too, and the embarrassed driver quickly apologized and told me to hop in. When we got on the highway, he said partly to me, partly to himself, “It’s a real war, eh?” And after taking a long breath, he added nostalgically, “Just like in the old days.”

...
Suddenly, the first salvo of missiles returned us to that familiar feeling of a war fought against a ruthless enemy who attacks our borders, a truly vicious enemy, not one fighting for its freedom and self-determination, not the kind that makes us stammer and throws us into confusion. Once again we’re confident about the rightness of our cause and we return with lightning speed to the bosom of the patriotism we had almost abandoned. Once again, we’re a small country surrounded by enemies, fighting for our lives, not a strong, occupying country forced to fight daily against a civilian population.

So is it any wonder that we’re all secretly just a tiny bit relieved? Give us Iran, give us a pinch of Syria, give us a handful of Sheik Nasrallah and we’ll devour them whole. After all, we’re no better than anyone else at resolving moral ambiguities. But we always did know how to win a war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/opinion/18keret.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Convince people they are victims - even when they are the aggressors. I suppose that's how it's always been.

There was another article that suggested that Israel needs the water that's in Lebanon - apparently peaceful methods wouldn't work - Lebanon wants their own water. People are more willing to fight against an enemy than they are for resources. Esp. when it's "self-defense" - killing is therefore morally justified.

[bloom]

8. "War Gives Israeli Leader Political Capital"

July 16, 2006
War Gives Israeli Leader Political Capital

By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, July 15 — The raid into Israel from southern Lebanon by the Shiite militia group Hezbollah has provided the new government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert a deeper political consensus, allowing him to prosecute a war that is widely supported by the Israeli people.

Before Hezbollah struck Wednesday, the Israeli operation in Gaza was into its third week with no tangible results and a mounting one-sided death toll. Its stated goals were to free the Israeli soldier captured inside Israel on June 25 in an attack in which two other soldiers were killed, and to stop Qassam rocket fire into Israel. But neither had been accomplished, and international criticism was growing.

So was internal criticism of Mr. Olmert and his inexperienced defense minister, Amir Peretz, the leader of the Labor Party, after the initial surge of solidarity over the soldier’s capture. That act itself was viewed as a humiliation for the army, which had received clear warnings of the plot from domestic intelligence....

“The Hezbollah issue helps the Olmert government a lot, because Hezbollah gave them a wonderful option to do something the army was already prepared to do, with a well-constructed operational plan on the shelf,” said Ron Pundak, director general of the Peres Center for Peace and a former Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/middleeast/16olmert.html?fta=y&pagewanted=print