“Stop that shit!” by Uri Avnery
rehna July 26th, 2006
Lebanese children, covered with wounds, in Beirut hospitals. The funeral of the victims of a missile in Haifa. The ruins of a whole devastated quarter in Beirut.
Inhabitants of the north of Israel fleeing south from the Katyushas. Inhabitants of the south of Lebanon fleeing north from the Israeli Air Force.
Death, destruction. Unimaginable human suffering.
And the most disgusting sight: George Bush in a playful mood sitting on his chair in St. Petersburg, with his loyal servant Tony Blair leaning over him, and solving the problem: “See? What they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbullah to stop doing that shit, and it’s over.”
Thus spake the leader of the world, and the seven dwarfs - “the great of the world” - say Amen.
SYRIA? BUT only a few months ago it was Bush - yes, the same Bush - who induced the Lebanese to drive the Syrians out of their country. Now he wants them to intervene in Lebanon and impose order?
31 years ago, when the Lebanese civil war was at its height, the Syrians sent their army into Lebanon (invited, of all people, by the Christians). At the time, the then Minister of Defense Shimon Peres and his associates created hysteria in Israel. They demanded that Israel deliver an ultimatum to the Syrians, to prevent them from reaching the Israeli border. Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister, told me then that that was sheer nonsense, because the best that could happen to Israel was for the Syrian army to spread out along the border. Only thus could calm be assured, the same calm that reigned along our border with Syria.
However, Rabin gave in to the hysteria of the media and stopped the Syrians far from the border. The vacuum thus created was filled by the PLO. In 1982, Ariel Sharon pushed the PLO out, and the vacuum was filled by Hizbullah.
All that has happened there since then would not have happened if we had allowed the Syrians to occupy the border from the beginning. The Syrians are cautious, they do not act recklessly.
WHAT WAS Hassan Nasrallah thinking of, when he decided to cross the border and carry out the guerilla action that started the current Witches’ Sabbath? Why did he do it? And why at this time?
Everybody agrees that Nasrallah is a clever person. He is also prudent. For years he has been assembling a huge stockpile of missiles of all kinds to establish a balance of terror. He knew that the Israeli army was only waiting for an opportunity to destroy them. In spite of that, he carried out a provocation that provided the Israeli government with a perfect pretext to attack Lebanon with the full approval of the world. Why?
Possibly he was asked by Iran and Syria, who had supplied him with the missiles, to do something to divert American pressure from them. And indeed, the sudden crisis has shifted attention away the Iranian nuclear effort, and it seems that Bush’s attitude towards Syria has also changed.
But Nasrallah is far from being a marionette of Iran or Syria. He heads an authentic Lebanese movement, and calculates his own balance sheet of pros and cons. If he had been asked by Iran and/or Syria to do something - for which there is no proof - and he saw that it was contrary to the aims of his movement, he would not have done it.
Perhaps he acted because of domestic Lebanese concerns. The Lebanese political system was becoming more stable and it was becoming more difficult to justify the military wing of Hizbullah. A new armed incident could have helped. (Such considerations are not alien to us either, especially before budget debates.)
But all this does not explain the timing. After all, Nasrallah could have acted a month before or a month later, a year before or a year later. There must have been a much stronger reason to convince him to enter upon such an adventure at precisely this time.
And indeed there was: Palestine.
TWO WEEKS before, the Israeli army had started a war against the population of the Gaza Strip. There, too, the pretext was provided by a guerrilla action, in which an Israeli soldier was captured. The Israeli government used the opportunity to carry out a plan prepared long before: to break the Palestinians’ will to resist and to destroy the newly elected Palestinian government, dominated by Hamas. And, of course, to stop the Qassams.
The operation in Gaza is an especially brutal one, and that is how it looks on the world’s TV screens. Terrible pictures from Gaza appear daily and hourly in the Arab media. Dead people, wounded people, devastation. Lack of water and medicaments for the wounded and sick. Whole families killed. Children screaming in agony. Mothers weeping. Buildings collapsing.
The Arab regimes, which are all dependent on America, did nothing to help. Since they are also threatened by Islamic opposition movements, they looked at what was happening to Hamas with some Schadenfreude. But tens of millions of Arabs, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf, saw, got excited and angry with their government, crying out for a leader who would bring succor to their besieged, heroic brothers.
Fifty years ago, Gamal Abd-el-Nasser, the new Egyptian leader, wrote that there was a role waiting for a hero. He decided to be that hero himself. For several years, he was the idol of the Arab world, symbol of Arab unity. But Israel used an opportunity that presented itself and broke him in the Six-day war. After that, the star of Saddam Hussein rose in the firmament. He dared to stand up to mighty America and to launch missiles at Israel, and became the hero of the Arab masses. But he was routed in a humiliating manner by the Americans, spurred on by Israel.
A week ago, Nasrallah faced the same temptation. The Arab world was crying out for a hero, and he said: Here am I! He challenged Israel, and indirectly the United States and the entire West. He started the attack without allies, knowing that neither Iran nor Syria could risk helping him.
Perhaps he got carried away, like Abd-el-Nasser and Saddam before him. Perhaps he misjudged the force of the counter-attack he could expect. Perhaps he really believed that under the weight of his rockets the Israeli rear would collapse. (As the Israeli army believed that the Israeli onslaught would break the Palestinian people in Gaza and the Shiites in Lebanon.)
One thing is clear: Nasrallah would not have started this vicious circle of violence, if the Palestinians had not called for help. Either from cool calculation, or from true moral outrage, or from both - Nasrallah rushed to the rescue of beleaguered Palestine.
THE ISRAELI reaction could have been expected. For years, the army commanders had yearned for an opportunity to eliminate the missile arsenal of Hizbullah and destroy that organization, or at least disarm it and push it far, far from the border. They are trying to do this the only way they know: by causing so much devastation, that the Lebanese population will stand up and compel its government to fulfill Israel’s demands.
Will these aims be achieved?
HIZBULLAH IS the authentic representative of the Shiite community, which makes up 40% of the Lebanese population. Together with the other Muslims, they are the majority in the country. The idea that the weakling Lebanese government - which in any case includes Hizbullah - would be able to liquidate the organization is ludicrous.
The Israeli government demands that the Lebanese army be deployed along the border. This has by now become a mantra. It reveals total ignorance. The Shiites occupy important positions in the Lebanese army, and there is no chance at all that it would start a fratricidal war against them.
Abroad, another idea is taking shape: that an international force should be deployed on the border. The Israeli government objects to this strenuously. A real international force - unlike the hapless UNIFIL which has been there for decades - would hinder the Israeli army from doing whatever it wants. Moreover, if it were deployed there without the agreement of Hizbullah, a new guerilla war would start against it. Would such a force, without real motivation, succeed where the mighty Israeli army was routed?
At most, this war, with its hundreds of dead and waves of destruction, will lead to another delicate armistice. The Israeli government will claim victory and argue that it has “changed the rules of the game”. Nasrallah (or his successors) will claim that their small organization has stood up to one of the mightiest military machines in the world and written another shining chapter of heroism in the annals of Arab and Muslim history.
No real solution will be achieved, because there is no treatment of the root of the matter: the Palestinian problem.
MANY YEARS ago, I was listening on the radio to one of the speeches of Abd-el-Nasser before a huge crowd in Egypt. He was holding forth on the achievements of the Egyptian revolution, when shouts arose from the crowd: “Filastine, ya Gamal!” (”Palestine, oh Gamal!”) Whereupon Nasser forgot what he was talking about and started on Palestine, getting more and more carried away.
Since then, not much has changed. When the Palestinian cause is mentioned, it casts its shadow over everything else. That’s what has happened now, too.
Whoever longs for a solution must know: there is no solution without settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And there is no solution to the Palestinian problem without negotiations with their elected leadership, the government headed by Hamas.
If one wants to finish, once and for all, with this shit - as Bush so delicately put it - that is the only way.
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- The Life Salon
- Comments(24)
Uri, do you believe that the Palestinians will listen to ANYTHING that the US, or the UN for that matter, has to say? I have serious doubts.
I wonder if Russia, Europe or China will have to be the ones to assist in the negotiations. I don’t believe this conflict is going to dissipate anytime soon and fear that the US/UK alliance (as well as Canada) will have little to nothing to do with eventually stopping it. We may think we are ‘big guns’ but there are no guarantees that other countries will listen to us. I think this is one example.
The Palestinian people have turned down US offers of support in the way of humanitarian aid. THey feel it would be hypocritical to accept anything from a country that has sided with their enemy. They have also make it clear to journalists that they are willing to live in a war situation for years if it means their ultimate freedom and that no one (least of all the US) can make them give in until they get there. They are fully committed to seeing this through to their view of the end.
I have concerns now too about the UN also destroying any goodwill on either side and bringing about a cease fire. First because the UN backed Israel after Israel’s initial attacks, thus sending a message that they were in the right to go after Hezbollah (and making Palestinians angry). They feel that the UN cannot be an objective party in this situation.
Then, Kofi’s recent comments about the bombing of a UN post -namely, his belief that it could well have been deliberate by the Israelis, angered the Israeli people.
No one involved with the conflict at this point seem to respect anything the UN has to say.
I do agree that Hezbollah’s actions in apprehanding Israeli’s as prisoners and starting up conflict gave Iran the chance to keep developping their weapons under the radar. That is pretty frightening to me!
I am deeply saddened to see the innocent children who are wounded and fear that we’ll see much more to come. This conflict is not going anywhere.
My apologies, I spelled Hizbullah incorrectly in my comment, above. It’s late and my mental recall is weak at the moment! :)
I fear that an even larger war will come out of this conflict. The US has stepped up its arms supplies to Israel, and has provided that country with Bunker Busters. The deeper into Lebanon Israel goes, the more likely it is that Syria and Iran will become involved. This is not going to end any time soon.
George Bush is a decidedly unsophisticated man who has a poor grasp of international geopolitics. He does not speak well without a speech written by someone else. Condoleeza Rice is running around the world telling everyone that they must convert to democracy, which is a form of government not compatible with every country and every culture. She is not calling for an immediate cease-fire, which only serves to fan the flames of the already rampant anti-Americanism.
If you think Palestinians do not listen to the US what can you say about the Israelians? I agree with Palestinians when they did not accept anything from the US. They always sided with Israel and it really hurt the Palestinians that. Why would they then accept fake help? Israel is very arrogant and is simply saying the world: ‘do not mess with us or you will see!!’ They simply have the best army in th world!
Oh I’m going to catch all kinds of flack for this but I admire the way the Israeli’s actually do something. They dont wait for the worlds permission. If you dump on them they will dump back, and they do it better than anyone else in the world… they don’t worry about being PR correct.
The war is not going to end.. as in ever. The nest has been swarming for at least the last 13 years. I have come to terms with that. How do you rationalize people who want to kill you because your women have rights and your country allows it’s people to have the faith they choose?
What bothers me is our “allies” Americans have suffered the most in terms of lives and money lost. I would like to see them band together for once and take charge and leave us out of it.
I like Tony Blair… it would be easy for him to bow down to the nay sayers and call America war mongers but so far he has always stood by us.. the only one with the balls to do so.
One thing I would change if I were in charge. If I was forced to go to war with a country, after I bombed them I would leave and let them clean up the mess… with their sweat, blood and money.
JMO
Oh yeah Israel always does do things. It bulldozes dozens of homes if a palestinian kid so much as throws a pebble at israeli soldiers. Israel is now destroying a whole country over 2 soldiers. typical bully boy backed by another bullyboy George W bush
America and Israel will not let things rest until they get rid of all muslims countries. They are all threatened by Islam, and quite frankly, they should be. I am not an extremist, far from it, but I do believe that it isnt just a coincidence that all the countries these idiots seem to be attacking, are muslim countries. Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria…I rest my case.
I loathe the Israeli regime. I have an instinctive aversion to everything it says and does because it is the most brutal, arrogant, contemptible, inhumane government in the world.
It practices apartheid against its own Arab citizens and openly flouts every international law. If any other country behaved in this fashion, it would be an international pariah. Israel is as despicable as apartheid South Africa and should be treated as such. The country’s government puts the cause of its people back a thousand years with each act of shameful violence.
Of course Diana admires Israel: they have the most powerful army in the world. Nobody is better than them. I pity any nation who try to crush them as they will see what will happen. I don’t speak Arabic or am Arab or Muslim myself, but I saw dead children from Lebano in that Aljazeera channel. If the BBC could show those images most of the British population would change their minds about what is happening now in Lebanon. Did you read the Guardian today when an Israeli said he doesn’t care for the people he killed? He killed children, babies. I know what I saw and it was heartbreaking.
I stopped buying products from Israel years ago. It is my way of fighting them. Do the same!! Do not give them more money to buy more tanks!!
My husband, who is Iraki born Swedish, bought our son a potty made in Israel and I was furious with him!! He said ’sorry’ and that this potty he bought in Edgware Road, in an arab shop!! I am sorry, but I really loathe Israel. And I don’t try and hide it.
Go Israel!
‘ Go Israel! ‘
That’s the kind of comment I would expect to hear at a football match not about a reckless invasion that will have international repurcussions well beyond the confines of israel and Lebanon. israel may have the military might but even the mighty make one mistake too many. This invasion is Israel’s mistake and you and I wherever we live, will pay the price soon enough. Think about that before you blithely egg on a foolish government backed by the worst president in US history and the worst Primeminister in British history.
Claudia, interesting you mention boycotting Israeli products.
I read an interview with an American woman recently whose job it is to analyze trends insocial behaviour so she can advise businesses.
Her prediction is that there will an increasing international boycott of American goods. it has begun already and will only grow, affecting many well known brands. it will be interesting to see how national economies are affected by ‘protest boycotts.’ Danish businesses apparently were hard hit by the recent boycotts in the wake of the cartoon controversy.
And most famously, apartheid South Africa suffered greatly from boycotts.
In some ways the world is becoming smaller but in other ways it is becoming more fragmented too. Ten years ago CNN for example would have had a monopoly on world news. Now different groups can rely on a number of news channels and each has its own take on a situation.
‘ they don’t worry about being PR correct.’
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Oh but they do. israel is the most PR conscious nation on earth. Israel cares deperately what the world thinks of it. That’s why it has played the victim card since its creation. Poor us. No nation plays on its people’s history more cynically than israel. no nation plays the American media better and more cynically than israel but this invasion is a PR disaster for Israel because the world has moved on. The politicians are in a time warp over israel , the public outside america is not.
People: we have to face the truth: Israel and the USA are the same nation!! Just now, I heard on the news that Britain intercepted an American plane taking ammunition to Israel. I believe Israel is the 51st American state.Did you notice that most Americans are in favour of Israel? Any American president ever was against Israel and imposed sanctions on them? This war on Lebanon is just a trick to get to Iran and Syria. Poor Syria: a very poor country. It will have no change whatsoever!! We have to be careful here because we will one day die, but we will leave children in this world. We have to stop wars and get on to live in a better planet. I hate Israel with a passion. I don’t believe Israel will ever get what they want. They are only making the rest of the world hate them more and more. Me, a simple Brazilian/British citizen, catholic, who hates them for years!! I am not arab nor muslim. I almost married a very good Jewish man who never cared about Israel. And I know quite a few who don’t agree with it.
The solutuion is quite simple….’ Wipe Israel from the face of the Earth.’
There will be an end to the middle east crises and neither will the West face any terrorist attacks.
No, I’m not Iranian.
No, I’m not Iranian.
Sounds like it to me.
Oh I’m going to catch all kinds of flack for this but I admire the way the Israeli’s actually do something. They dont wait for the worlds permission
Not from me…
Hezbollah is an outlawed terrorist organization with a UN resolution calling for it’s disarmanent .
They are right now cowardly blending among refugees’ and shooting rockets into Israel from neighborhoods.
Until the world gets the guts to fight these terrorists then it will have to be up to Israel to do it.
My main fear about all of this conflict is that Hezbollah are allowing themselves to take heat so that Iran can quietly continue to develop their biological and nuclear weapons. The US and Britain are distracted from the real threat.
You think about Iran but forget North Korea!! This is all a conspiracy agains the middle east. Israel and the US want total control of the middel east area. I don’t know why.
I don’t like Iran either, but Syria is very poor country and they have nothing. If Iran has biological weapons or nuclear weapons they will use it if they are attacked. They won’t mind destroying the rest of the world.
And there is another threat: Pakistan that has many terrorists being trained there. Why on earth did never catch Bin Laden? the world is not that big. Or this man is already dead or he works for the CIA like many people say. I do not believe that the US with all their spies would not find this man.
For me, this is all a big theatre. The problem is: the US and Israel are not good liars.
Claudia you made a good point earlier. To be anti israel does not mean being anti Jewish. I have Jewish friends who are deeply ashamed of Israel. I have Jewish friends who know Israelis who desperately want peace with the Palestinians.
Can you imagine if 37 Israeli children had been killed? We would never have heard the end of it. Israel would have wailed around the world. Have you ever heard Israeli ministers talk about the Palestinians? They can’t even bear to mention their name as if they are unworthy or not even human. The truth is the Israelis think they are above everyone else. They have no regard for the Christian Americans who support them because they see israel as an enemy of the muslim world. The American public is duped by their media into thinking the threat is all from the Muslim countries when the country that is most likely to start WW3 is Israel!
osama bin laden - the most dangerous man in the world, blah,blah blah - the Americans never intended to catch him. He was just a ploy to get the American public prepared for perpetual war.
I would ignore Pink Salute, like Israel he/she is trying to provoke a response then claim anti-semitism. Israel IS an apartheid state, the only people in northen Israel that don’t have access to air raid shelters are Arab Israelis.
Sooner or later, people will get tired of Israel playing the victim and of Israel pointing the finger at Iran and Syria. It’s not Syria or Iran that have occupied land belonging to 3 other countries for decades. There have also been reports from hospitals in Lebanon of vistims being brought in with burns that could only have come from chemical weapons.
I can only imagine the hystria in the west if similar injuries had been seen on Israeli children.
Claudia you could not be more correct about Israel & The U S being one.
Jeffrey Berkowitz (2005-2006) White House Liaison to the Jewish Community and then office of presidential scheduling
Stuart Bernstein Ambassador to Denmark
Brad BlakemanWhite House Director of Scheduling
Josh Bolten (2006- ) Chief of Staff
Nancy Brinker Ambassador to Hungary
Michael ChertoffHead of the Justice Department’s criminal division
Douglas Feith (2001-2005 )Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Ari Fleischer (2001-2003)White House Press Secretary
David Frum (2001-2002)Speechwriter
Chris GerstenPrincipal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families at HHS
Adam Goldman (2001-2003)White House Liaison to the Jewish Community
Blake GottesmanPresident’s personal aide
Daniel KurtzerAmbassador to Israel
Frank Lavin Ambassador to Singapore
Jay Lefkowitz (2001-2004)Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council
I. Lewis Libby (2001-2005)Chief of Staff to the Vice President
Ken MehlmanWhite House Political Director
John MillerDirector, State Departement Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Noam Neusner (2004-2005)White House Liaison to the Jewish Community
Mel Sembler Ambassador to Italy
Martin Silverstein Ambassador to Uruguay
Cliff Sobel Ambassador to the Netherlands
Tevi Troy (2003-2004)White House Liaison to the Jewish Community
Mark D. Weinberg Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Public Affairs
Ron Weiser Ambassador to Slovakia
Paul Wolfowitz (2001-2005)Deputy Secretary of Defense
Dov Zakheim (2001-2004)Undersecretary of Defense (Controller)
Jay Zeidman
Yes all Jewish and Pro Israel…. And these are the people who run the US goverment. I’m sure I’m missing a few hiding within the CIA, NSA and Pentagon.
This is the most objective reasoning about the Arab-Israeli conflict yet! I have some comments:
You may have missed the real reason why Lebanese people support Hezbollah today more than ever. Hezbollah gave an excuse to capturing Israeli soldiers that they wanted to exchange these soldiers with Lebanese prisoners. This issue has been discussed many times internally in Lebanon and people sympathize with the Lebanese in Israeli prisons especially that many had been released earlier using diplomatic means. Regardless of the real cause behind the Hezbollah move, Israel on the other hand refuses to take away from Hezbollah the reason for its continued military activity in the south. You have concluded that the Israeli-Palastenian conflict continues to be the main obstacle to peace. Lebanese have suffered a lot from the Israeli-Palastenian conflict, and they would not accept Hezbollah to be military active against Israel if there is no “Lebanese reason” for it. The fact remains that Israel does not seem to want to live in peace with its neighbors. More than 1000 dead in Lebanon, most of them children will not cause Lebanese people to turn on Hezbollah, on the contrary they will insist on Hezbollah keeping their weapons and support the Hezbollah valid claim today that it is defending the country against Israeli agression.