Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Thursday, January 08, 2009
The Neoconservative Style & Weblog Awards
Michael J. Totten has surged way ahead in the voting online for the best Middle East weblog. The way he has done this is very instructive and tells us something about how the Neoconservatives always run rings around the American left and leave them with nothing to do but complain about Neoconservative power.
First, Totten demonized me and mobilized rightwingers in general and right-Zionists in particular to vote for him as a way of voting against Informed Comment.
One way he did this was to take a leaf from Karl Rove's campaign book. I had written that lead 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta wrote his will and testament, an implicit dedication to seeking martyrdom, in response to the 1996 Israel Grapes of Wrath attack on Lebanon. During Grapes of Wrath, the Israeli air force committed a massacre of civilians at a UN refugee station that no one in the UN thinks was an accident. The sight of those innocent, bloody children being pulled out of the rubble angered many in the Muslim world.
Pulitzer-prize winning author Lawrence Wright wrote in his Looming Tower, p. 307: "On April 11, 1996, when Atta was twenty-seven years old, he signed a standardized will he got from the al-Quds mosque.l It was the day Israel attacked Lebanon in Operation grapes of Wrath. According to one of his friends, Atta was enraged,and by filling out his last testament during the attack he was offering his life in response."
In my initial posting I had misremembered one detail, which is that the will was signed when Operation Grapes of Wrath began, not on the day of the Qana massacre. I corrected that within a few hours. But my over-all point was correct. Totten is still fulminating as though I had said something preposterous, and indeed, is using my quite legitimate point to suggest, as he has written around to others, that I am an "imbecile." It is dishonest of him not to acknowledge the Wright quote, which I have provided.
My larger point is that Israeli atrocities in Gaza are endangering American security. If the Israeli operation were something other than a cynical power play that almost wholly disregards civilian welfare, then the US would be right to support it and damn the consequences. But it is a shame to place our land and even our democracy in danger on behalf of a barbaric military operation.
These tactics ot Totten remind me very much of what Bush and Rove did to John Kerry in 2004, when Kerry complained that Bush had allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora. Bush trotted out some military weasels to deny it all and then indicted Kerry for lack of patriotism. And he mobilized his base, and he won.
So that's how you do it. 1) You assassinate the character of your opponent. 2) You make his correct statements into a liability by propagandizing that they are false or unpatriotic. And 3) you mobilize a base of single-issue true believers that you can depend on to dominate the discourse because most people don't care and are not invested.
And that is how, having helped Obama win the 2008 election, the American left will still be marginalized and likely will gradually be supplanted in his counsels by rightwing organizations such as AIPAC, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (headed by Dennis Ross), the American Enterprise Institute, and so forth. They are good at demonizing opponents, good at twisting the truth, and good at strategic networking; and too few people who oppose their views are willing to put themselves out in any way.
It isn't material who wins that little weblog award. It is illuminating for our politics to see how they are accomplishing it. /End
For "cont'd" postings, click here.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from Baghdad attacked the international community for its silence in the face of what he called Israeli brutality, and he put pressure on Jordan, Egypt and Turkey (without naming them) to break off diplomatic relations with Israel.
At least three and perhaps five rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on Thursday morning, wounding 4 Israelis. Cont'd One rocket landed in Nahariya north of Haifa. Israel said it had returned precision artillery fire on the source of the rockets, but Lebanese sources said that Israeli shells landed in fields. Aljazeera is saying that the Israelis deny that the rockets likely came from Hizbullah, and that Hizbullah is also denying they are pursuing such actions, saying they are "not useful at this time." The implication is that a Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon developed this capabiiity. Anyway, obviously the potential is there for the Gaza War to be widened if it goes on much longer.
Nor do the Israelis seem eager to press the issue. Militarily, Israel has plenty of spare fighter jets and bombs for Lebanon in addition to Gaza. But opening a second front would increase the international pressure on Israel to pursue a ceasefire. They seem to want to go on bombing and shelling Gaza for another week or so, and may not want to risk more bad publicity by starting up with Lebanon.
Workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza say they have gone into houses and discovered horrific scenes of corpses, and of living children still next to the body of their mother. Physicians in Gaza are convince that the official death and casualty totals for this military operation are gross underestimates, and that there are lots of buildings with undiscovered corpses in them alongside orphaned children.
Since the Gazans are trapped in Gaza and cannot leave, and since some important proportion of them is denied by this condition enough food to avoid malnutrition, I'd say "concentration camp" is about right.
Analysis. The fighting in Gaza is closely linked to two other conflicts: Israel’s relationship with Syria and Iran’s role in the region. All three conflicts need to be solved in order to achieve peace.
Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza has led to Syria breaking off the semi-official peace negotiations with Israel, the strengthening of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s popularity, the weakening of the pro-western governments of Egypt and Jordan, and an upswing in recruits ready to join the many extremist groups in the Middle East.
Everything indicates that a peaceful and constructive development of the situation has been pushed even further into the future.
This outcome is in sharp contrast to the positive developments of the 90s, when the Israeli-Palestinian peace process contributed to the Israeli-Syrian rapprochement and the election of the moderate Khatami as president of Iran.
If the region is to exit the current death spiral, it will be necessary to exploit the synergies that a coordinated approach to the situation would open up. Cont'd The First Conflict: Palestine-Israel
The Palestine-Israel conflict is now 50 years old. The diplomatic track that the Oslo Process represented has collapsed, and the parties are instead attempting to improve their relative positions by military means.
Hamas is no longer interested in continuing the cease fire with Israel, as long as the blockade of Gaza is still in effect. Meanwhile, Israel seeks to weaken Hamas as much as possible with the invasion of Gaza, and concurrently achieve results with the moderate, but increasingly irrelevant, Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamas has no faith in reaching a diplomatic solution with Israel and wishes to repeat the success of Hezbollah in Lebanon in achieving a balance of power with Israel, leading to Israel accepting and recognizing Hamas as a negotiating partner and accepting Hamas’ demands as Hamas improves its position of strength.
These increasingly violent developments lead the Israeli population to fear, however, that a Palestinian state will not protect them against terrorism, which is why the majority of them backs the attacks on Gaza.
But the support for the hard Israeli line is also caused by the increased prominence of the ultra-orthodox and strongly nationalist element of the population relative to the secular and more moderate element.
The reason for this is partly demographic in that the ultra-orthodox are increasing their numbers far more rapidly than are the secular, and partly that many moderate Israelis are leaving the country for more peaceful parts of the world.
The Second Conflict: Syria-Israel
The Syria-Israel conflict has not moved either since Israel conquered the Syrian Golan in the ’67 War. Although the border between the two countries has been calm, Syria has been pressing Israel by supplying Iranian weapons to Hezbollah through the Damascus airport.
The desire of Israel to establish peace with Syria and hand back the Golan thus is directly related to Israel’s desire to stop this traffic and end Syria’s longstanding alliance with Iran.
There is just the problem that if Syria enters into a peace agreement with Israel in a situation where neither the Israeli-Palestinian question nor the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program is resolved, the Alawite minority government in Syria will soon be challenged by an unsavory alliance between Iran and its own Islamist dissidents–and will face a very uncertain future.
Since the Syrian regime is not in the habit of committing suicide, an isolated agreement between Syria and Israel is not likely.
The Third Conflict: Iran
The third point of conflict is Iran: Iran's nuclear research program involves the use of centrifuges for enrichment. Should the regime close the fuel cycle, and should it decide to pursue a nuclear weapons capability, the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate of the US government suggested that Tehran could have a warhead in as little as a decade. If this happens, the balance of power in the region will be significantly altered. Israel’s current regional monopoly on nuclear weapons will be broken, and Israel will be inclined to delay such a development with military attacks on the Iranian nuclear installations.
This in turn may lead to Iran convincing Hezbollah to attack Israel on the one hand, and on the other to attack US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq with help from Iran’s allies in those countries. Finally Iran will most likely seek to disrupt the oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Increased western sanctions against Iran will be perceived by many as yet more proof of the unholy alliance between the West and the Zionists against Islam–and this will strengthen the hawks in Ahmadinejad’s environment and weaken the moderate forces.
In such a situation Iran and the Islamic terrorists will do everything in their power to prevent an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement.
Therefore the three conflicts are closely linked. Without progress in one, it will also be very limited what progress can be achieved in the other conflicts.
A Coordinated International Approach
Conversely, a coordinated international approach, including both Iran and the Arab states, could lead to progress on one track, then on the next and result in a de-escalation of the conflict level in the entire region.
Progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track will, for example, increase the probability of Syria and Iran showing themselves more willing to negotiate. Progress in the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program will make it less important for Iran to derail the negotiations between Israel and Syria and between Israel and the Palestinians and will also dampen Israel’s fear of Iran.
Finally, progress in relations between Syria and Israel will weaken Hezbollah and thereby also Iran, thus making Iran more cooperative on the nuclear question.
The international community has many opportunities to influence developments in the region and ought to use these to promote a coordinated solution. Economic incentives, security guarantees, and deployment of peace-keeping forces to Palestine are just some of the means that can be employed.
Multilateral Resolve
Diplomatically, the multilateral approach used by Bush Senior in the 90s would be the correct one–with the addition of resolve in checking the expansion of the Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the will to declare how the solution to the Palestinian problem ought to look.
Two things are clear: The region itself cannot solve its problems, and the separate approach to each of the three conflicts that has been used so far is inadequate.
' The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Syria and the Khomeinist regime in Iran, the deepening of the alliance with Turkey, the marginalization of Saudi Arabia, a new era of cheap petroleum, and a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms favorable to Israel. After eight years in which they strode the globe like colossi, they have left behind a devastated moonscape reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic B movie. As their chief enabler prepares to exit the White House, the only nation they have strengthened is Iran; the only alliance they have deepened is that between Iran and two militant Islamist entities to Israel's north and south, Hezbollah and Hamas.'
Al-Fakhoura School Bombed, 42 Killed, Including Children; 13,000 Homeless Water, Medicine in Short Supply
In 1996, Israeli jets bombed a UN building where civilians had taken refuge at Cana/ Qana in south Lebanon, killing 102 persons; in the place where Jesus is said to have made water into wine, Israeli bombs wrought a different sort of transformation. In the distant, picturesque port of Hamburg, a young graduate student studying traditional architecture of Aleppo saw footage like this on the news [graphic]. He was consumed with anguish and the desire for revenge. As soon as operation Grapes of Wrath had begun the week before, he had written out a martyrdom will, indicating his willingness to die avenging the victims, killed in that operation--with airplanes and bombs that were a free gift from the United States. His name was Muhammad Atta. Five years later he piloted American Airlines 11 into the World Trade Center. (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 307: "On April 11, 1996, when Atta was twenty-seven years old, he signed a standardized will he got from the al-Quds mosque.l It was the day Israel attacked Lebanon in Operation grapes of Wrath. According to one of his friends, Atta was enraged,and by filling out his last testamentd during the attack he was offering his life in response." ).
On Tuesday, the Israeli military shelled a United Nations school to which terrified Gazans had fled for refuge, killing at least 42 persons and wounding 55, virtually all of them civilians, and many of them children. The Palestinian death toll rose to 660.
You wonder if someone somewhere is writing out a will today. Cont'd In fact, you know that the Israeli leaders know that likely their atrocities against civilians in Gaza will produce further terrorism, both against the United States and Israel. They are obviously entirely willing to take that risk. Why? The Israeli far right thrives on ethnic conflict. It may be worried that Obama will try to curb it. What is the worst that could happen, from their point of view? That Obama's presidency would be destroyed by an alleged failure to prevent such an attack, and that the US public would be shifted to the Right and rededicate itself to its flagging crusade against Islam-- oops, I mean "war on terror"?
And as though on cue, Ayman al-Zawahiri came out with a video Tuesday, saying, ""We will never stop until we avenge the death of all who are killed, injured, widowed and orphaned in Palestine and throughout the Islamic world . . ." He then attacked Barack Obama, saying "These air strikes are a gift from Obama before he takes office, and from Hosni Mubarak, the traitor who is the primary partner in your siege and murder."
What I am saying is that Israeli leaders like Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and the Israeli high command and intelligence all knew this danger very well when they launched this bloodbath. They subjected you and me to it anyway, because it is immaterial to them what happens to the United States as a result of their bloody-mindedness. They want theirs. They are no different in that regard from American hawks. Bush knew he was endangering Madrid and Glasgow when he attacked Iraq. He didn't care about his allies, either. In the Hawk Business, provoking terrorism is all to the good. Nor are they different in this regard from the leadership of Hamas, which also acted provocatively without regard to the wider consequences.
' Hundreds of Palestinians had fled their homes for the refuge of the al-Fakhoura school, hoping the blue and white flag of the UN flying over the impromptu shelter would protect them from the Israeli onslaught. The UN had even given the Israeli army the co-ordinates for the building to spare it from the shells and air strikes raining down on the Gaza strip. But yesterday afternoon tank shells exploded outside the school, sending shrapnel into the crowds, killing at least 42 and wounding another 55. '
Let us just repeat that. It was a school. It was flying a UN flag. The UN had given the Israeli military the coordinates. People were seeking refuge there from Israeli air strikes and military operations. If it were true, as the Israelis now charge after the fact, that the building was being used for mortar attacks on the Israeli army, the why in the world would anyone in their right minds stay there. It would be like playing golf in a lightning storm, and Gazans are not stupid about war. Second, how come dead soldiers didn't come out of the building? The United Nations has denied this far-fetched Israeli claim.
If it is a heck of a note to be ten years old and dead, it isn't that much fun to be alive, either, under near-famine conditions. Thirteen thousand Gazans have fled their homes but have no where to go, since they are blockaded in Gaza, as though they were not human beings but rather roaches in a jar. Ofira Koopmans and Saud Abu Ramadan of Deutsche Press Agentur report,
' Residents of Gaza City, who have been without electricity for days, say they have only small amounts of drinking water. With even candles now a scarce commodity, Gaza City residents sit in the dark - many of them in winter coats as they keep windows open to avoid glass shards flying inside their homes from a possible nearby blast. . with the large influx of casualties - unprecedented in at least five decades of the conflict - . . . hospitals are in urgent need of blood units, anaesthetics, strong painkillers, tetanus vaccines and even body bags and sheets, according to the Red Cross. Only two bakeries remain open in Gaza City, with queues stretching all the way down the street. After venturing outdoors and waiting in line for hours on end, each customer can get one plastic bag with 50 small pita breads. Prices have nearly doubled since the offensive began. Large parts of the strip also have no tap water, as power blackout mean pumps are not working.'
Nancy Kanwisher of MIT can count and therefore so does her article. She demonstrates that after the Israel-Hamas truce was concluded in mid-June, 2008, for four months there were virtually no rockets fired at Israel. The rockets began again after two Israeli attacks that killed several Palestinians. Kaminer analyzes periods of mutual violence and relative calm in the past few years and finds that in 80% of the cases, it is Israel that has re-initiated the violence. Her well-grounded analysis demonstrates the falsehood of the allegations that it is impossible to deal with Hamas or that it has always been Hamas that has started the fighting.
Kaminer's findings make perfect sense if it is remembered that Israel is by far the stronger party and dominates the scene.
' Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence. . .'
' Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era . . . In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. . .'
' To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace . . .'
'Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs . . . '
Hey, an update. Please vote for Informed Comment, which has been nominated for the 2008 Weblog Awards. If you voted 24 hours ago, you can now vote again. IC is losing! But not by much so every vote counts.
Aljazeera Arabic this evening interviewed Sayyid Najm, an Egyptian novelist and literature specialist on war in literature. He is author of, among other things, Ayyam Yusuf Mansi (Cairo: Zahran, 1990). He made some interesting points about the structure of war novels, and the way the pacing has to be picked up during the battles. The interviewer then asked about the current fighting.
Q. In light of your experience with war in literature, what do you have to say about Gaza today?
Sayyid Najm: If were were to speak about the literature of war with regard to today, I'd have to say that there is no war in Gaza. In Gaza today, all that we have experienced and lived through and dealt with the meaning of, tells us that a war is a conventional army fighting another conventional army. But here the tanks are going against flesh and human beings; bullets and bombs and fighter jets against bodies and eyes, children and women; death before blood and earth. This is no war. What is going on in Gaza, if we are to express it correctly, is state terror. /End.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.
Raed's t-shirt said "lan nasmut," "we will not be silent," a slogan adopted by Arab opponents of totalitarian regimes from the White Rose group that opposed the Nazis. My recollection is that he was told at the time he should have known better than to wear Arabic while flying.
She is being identified by my facebook friends as Huwaida Arraf, a Detroiter married to Adam Shapiro, a University of Michigan Poli Sci graduate, and a founder of International Solidarity Movement, a nonviolent activist organization.
The Gaza War is coming at a poignant time for the Shiite world, since the opening 10 days of the first month of the Muslim year, Muharram, are a time of mourning for the martyred grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Husayn b. Ali. The tenth of the month, called Ashura, is especially sacred. Some Shiites hold public processions and beat, whip or cut themselves in grief that Husayn was struck down by forces of evil. It is therefore a season of heightened emotionalism, in which the focus is on grieving for the weak, cut down by powerful forces of oppression.
Radical Sunni guerrillas took advantage of this season of processions to the shrines of the Prophet's descendants to attack the gathered Shiites in Iraq. On Monday, a suicide bomber killed 40 and wounded dozens near the shrine of Imam Musa Kazim at Kadhimiya, north Baghdad. While this tactic might have made a perverted sort of sense two or three years ago, as some Sunni Arabs sought Sunni-Shiite conflict as a way of destabilizing Iraq, now that the Shiites have won the battle for Baghdad so decisively, such attacks are just petty revenge or nihilism. They no longer seem to have much political charge.
Iraqis, both Sunni and Shiite, are exercised about Gaza.
For the Shiite world (Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, south Lebanon, central Afghanistan and South Asia), the attack on Gaza is being read as the martyrdom of Husayn.
This whole episode may strengthen the hardliners in Iran and give the regime the excuse it needs to sideline more liberal candidates for prime minister. If Israel prolongs the campaign, there is likely to be increased networking and solidarity among Shiites across national borders. I worry that American targets are closer and easier to hit, and that they will go after the US military as a way of getting at Israel. Nor would the campaign necessarily come during the present operation; Middle Easterners have longer memories about these things than do Americans.
Remember, most Muslims see Israel as merely doing the US bidding in attacking Gaza.
The Analysts at Jane's Defense Weekly expect the Israeli attack on Gaza to last another 10 days or so. They do not expect it to achieve any tangible success, and therefore predict a long-term poor security situation in southern Israel.
'The Israeli attack offers no remedy, rather it is a symptom and cause of the open-ended Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it is seriously harming a civilian population already enduring great hardship. Israel has tried and failed to crush Hamas and other Palestinian groups before and it has no clear plan for ending the conflict with Hamas or its occupation of Palestinian territory. Israel cannot impose its will by force and one day it will need to talk to the people it is currently punishing through bombardment and blockade.'
'More than 10,000 sites have been compromised by hackers, many Muslim radicals who are gaining control of the sites to scrawl anti-Israeli, anti-American and pro-Palestinian messages, said Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham . . . a number of high-profile Israel-based sites, including Ynetnews.com and israelairlines.com, recently fell victim to defacement when a Moroccan-based hacker team illegally accessed a New York-based domain registrar . . .'
For a while, there was an Israeli site encouraging denial of service attacks by Israeli hackers, that appears to have been taken down.
PC World adds, "The defacements have primarily affected small businesses and vanity Web pages hosted on Israel's .il Internet domain space."
' The widely-circulated Israeli daily's website, Ynetnews.com, has been defaced and is now a picture guide to the progressive takeover of Palestinian land by settlers since 1946. The website, which is widely acknowledged as pro-Zionism, also draws parallels between the US conduct in Iraq and the Israeli siege on Gaza with a picture showing Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks above an image of American soldiers torturing detainees in Abu Ghraib prison.'
All those things Bush & Cheney are proud about, like the immense pile of bodies they have had carefully counted (as Tom Engelhardt points out), have not been forgotten by the Muslim world. Gaza reminds them. I shouldn't have thought making an explicit connection to Abu Ghraib would have been necessary-- most people in the Muslim world view Israeli actions as US actions. It is one of the great worries I have, that this attack on Gaza will reignite al-Qaeda terrorism on US soil. More on that later.
From here on out, surely all wars will have a strong cyberspace dimension. Propaganda and counter-propaganda are nothing new, and the Israeli Foreign Ministry is taking a direct role in manipulating Western media on Gaza. But hacking and denial of service attacks have their own dynamics that will change the way the game is played. /End
He says he has seen one military casualty come into the hospital. Of 2500 wounded, 50% are women and children. Doing surgery around the clock. There are injuries you do not want to see-- children coming in with open abdomens, with injured legs, we had to amputate both of them. This is a war on the civilian population of Gaza. It is a very young population. They cannot flee. They are fenced in. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage.
Have Bush and the Neocons Ruined it for the Israelis?
The Israeli propaganda blitz around their attack on Gaza has been greeted with uncharacteristic skepticism by the American public and even by some of the mainstream US press. Even the Jewish American community is uneasy about this one, in a way perhaps unparalelled since the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon and siege of Beirut. Jews for Peace in Los Angeles are actively protesting the Gaza atrocities, and newspaper articles from around the US on local protests held this weekend often mention mixed Arab-American and Jewish-American rallies.
If it is true that Americans are greeting Israeli talking points with more criticism this time, is it because we have been intensively exposed for the past 8 years to precisely this sort of mental manipulation by Bush-Cheney and their stable of Neoconservatives?
Let's take some of the basic techniques of propaganda practiced by Bush and compare them to those deployed by the Israeli leadership in the past 8 days.
1. Deny it all.
Bushie Examples: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denied that there was massive looting in Iraq during April of 2003, alleging that CNN had one tape of a guy stealing a vase and kept looping it over and over again. "How many vases can they have?" he asked. In mid-summer 2003, Rumsfeld denied that there was a guerrilla war in Iraq, even though Jamie McIntyre of CNN was able to quote the Pentagon definition of guerrilla war, and it fit Iraq. Rumsfeld just replied, "No." Cont'd/ Then there was Bush's insistence that "Brownie" had done a "heckuva job" in New Orleans after Katrina.
' the UN agency insisted it was desperate to get supplies into the enclave."The military incursion compounds the humanitarian crisis following more than a week of shelling and an 18-month long blockade of the territory," the UN humanitarian coordinatory said in a daily report. There was an "almost total blackout" across most of Gaza and land and mobile phone networks were also down because they depend on backup generators which had no fuel, the report said. All Gaza City hospitals have been without mains electricity for 48 hours and now rely on backup generators which the UN said were "close to collapse." The report said that "for the second consecutive day Israeli authorities have refused to allow an ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) emergency medical team into Gaza" to help at the main Shifa hospital. The territory has been sealed off for more than two days. . . More than 510 Palestinians have already been killed in Israel's nine day old offensive on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which on Saturday was intensified with the launch of a massive ground operation. The UN said the tank fire and air attacks were preventing medical staff reaching hospitals and ambulances could not get to injured "because of continuous fire." The World Food Programme has coordinated emergency food deliveries into Gaza in recent months but the Israeli army said there was plenty of food in Gaza warehouses and that the territory's Hamas rulers had halted distribution.'
In line with Livni's Big Lie, the Israeli army said with a straight face that the reason the World Food Program doesn't send food into Gaza is because its warehouses there are "full."
2. Pretend that your main concern is for your own victims
Bushie examples: They refused to say that they "invaded" or "conquered" Iraq, always using the word "liberation" when they spoke of their war of aggression. Bush was not invading and occupying Iraq, he was liberating the long-suffering Iraqis. Richard Perle even maintained that they would be "grateful" for being "liberated." I.e., we're doing this to you for your own good.
The Bushies renamed the Iraqi guerrilla resistance to the US "anti-Iraqi forces." They even managed to get some clueless CNN anchors to report that "anti-Iraqi forces attacked US troops in the Triangle of Death today." The implication was that the US military and its allies were the pro-Iraqi forces.
Kadima: Livni said, "But Hamas is not our problem alone; it is also a problem for all the Palestinians in the region." I.e., Israel is bombing and attacking Gaza on behalf of the Palestinians to secure their welfare.
3. Demonizing the opponent, ad hominem arguments
Bushies: "Axis of Evil" (courtesy Neocon David Frum). Bush called Saddam a "threat" even if he had no weapons!. Saddam was intrinsically dangerous, ontologically dangerous; his danger to the US could not be divorced from his very being in existence. (How silly this all is is easily demonstrated by the Reagan and first Bush administration's active alliance with . . . Saddam.)
Hamas won the elections for the Palestine Authority in January 2006 and formed a government; yet Livni objects even to speaking of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, because Hamas, she says, is just a terrorist organization. (It has engaged in terrorist tactics, just as Livni has committed state terror on a large scale, as with dropping a million cluster bombs on civilian areas of south Lebanon; but Hamas isn't "just" a terrorist organization, or Livni's bombing of policemen and the ministry of interior in Gaza would make no sense; she thinks it was the government of Gaza, obviously. Hamas has engaged in diplomacy, has called truces, etc. It is made up of human beings, not demons.)
4. Repetition of simple slogans until they become accepted as true
Bushie examples: There are so many I don't know where to start. But the repeated innuendo that Saddam Hussein was operationally connection to the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks on the US is the big example. The assertion that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" (itself a propaganda phrase intended to suggest nukes) was made over and over again, and Bush, Rice, andothers constantly used "mushroom cloud" and other nuclear imagery for Iraq.
Kadima examples: Israelis point to thousands of rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel, without mentioning that no Israelis had been killed by them during the truce stretching from mid-June, 2008 until December 26. That is, the prelude to the most violent Israeli attack on Gaza since 1967 was . . . not a single Israeli death at the hands of Hamas in the preceding half-year. And in 8 years, Hamas had killed about 15 Israelis with those home made rockets, during which time the Israelis had killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly 1000 of them minors. The rockets were small, handmade affairs for the most part and most landed uselessly. Some did damage to property and a few wounded or killed people. That would be a legitimate assertion. But the quotation of "thousands" of rockets is a half-truth and intentionally misleading.
Another half-truth is that Israel is involved in a "peace process" or supports Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, when in fact it has gone on stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank and making Palestinian lives miserable and colonizing them.
Then there are other techniques such as 6) appeal to fear and 7) appeal to prejudice. Apologists for the attack on Gaza depict Gazans as murderous, jihadi, homophobic, sharia-wielding fanatics, in a word, Muslims, and therefore of course their lives don't matter. Sound familiar?
Having been treated to these propaganda techniques repeatedly and continuously for 8 years, the US public can suddenly hear the similarity in the assertions of Israeli officialdom and its supporters.
Of course, the Neoconservatives had borrowed a lot of their techniques from the Jabotinsky/ Likud tradition of revisionist Zionism, so what goes around comes around.
By the way, since Tzipi Livni admitted Sunday that her government is resisting a diplomatic solution to Gaza and wants to keep the war going as long as possible, and that one impediment is "the pictures coming out of Gaza"-- i.e. of dead children and civilians and ordinary policemen, I'll just put in this link for those with a tough stomach. Not for the squeamish (and not an endorsement of the site). Here is another one; same caveats
Davidson Guest Op-Ed: "Whose Interest Defines National Interest?"
Lawrence Davidson, author of Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing America's National Interest, writes in a guest op-ed for IC:
Why is it that most Americans pay little attention to foreign policy? For instance, over the last eight years we have seen the awful consequences of foreign policies that support dictators, supply the weapons for war crimes against the Palestinian people, launch invasions of sovereign nations under false pretenses, and earn the United States the anger, bordering on hatred, of growing numbers of people around the globe? Yet there is no real outcry among Americans except for a small, if increasingly vocal, minority.
A major consequence of this disregard is that actual policy formulation has come under the influence of well organized and financed lobby groups which do have interests in foreign affairs. This is certainly the case as regards the Middle East. Here both Jewish Zionists and Christian fundamentalist Zionists have achieved ascendent influence over policy formulation toward Israel and the Palestinian territories and much of the rest of the region as well. Likewise, a neo-conservative interest group with strong ties to Israel, achieved command positions in the Defense and State Departments under the administration George W. Bush. Relative to these lobbies, the influence of oil interests is of only secondary importance. One can argue that as a result of this situation, there is no foreign policy reflecting genuine US national interests for this important part of the world. There has been, and continues to be, only the parochial goals of special interests which present their own aims to the public as "national interests."
The public’s inattention to foreign policy has inevitably led to a deep and persisting ignorance of the consequences of US foreign policy. The mainstream mass media, whose editors and reporters are themselves often biased in their perspectives and ignorant of the "facts on the ground," has helped perpetuate a myth that American foreign policy is mainly an altruistic effort to export our domestic ideals: democracy, modernity, development, etc. The long list of dictatorships that Washington has seen fit to subsidize and arm, the coups and right wing revolutions that the CIA has been involved in (sometimes aimed against democratically elected governments), the subordination of whole economies to the interests of US business concerns, the collusion of multiple US administrations in the destruction of Palestinian people, and other dubious policies have conveniently been overlooked by most of the media. Thus, when those abroad who resist US policies do damage to American lives and property, the vast majority of American citizens have no context to understand their behavior. They are easily convinced they are terrorists who simply "hate our values."
Yet the truth of the matter is that America’s policies in the Middle East have been lobby driven for at least the last 60 years. And, unbeknownst to the general public, they helped create the historical context for the September 11, 2001 attacks. Then, the response of the Bush administration to that attack went on to made things much worse for the US. There are more than a billion Muslims in the world and a growing number of them are now seriously angry at America. There are over 300 million Arabs and many of them are willing to materially support those who stand up against the US and its ally Israel. These vast numbers represent the sea in which our country’s adversaries now swim. The US has not the manpower, the intelligence capacity, nor the staying power to fight and defeat all the various organizations that have and will arise to confront us. Keep in mind that these will not be regular armies, but will be guerrilla operations and clandestine groups who, as we have seen, are already capable of doing us great damage both in their own part of the world and here in America.
Under the circumstances, it is in the interest of all Americans that there be a thorough policy review of past and present foreign policy efforts in the Middle East. This should be done with transparency and include a national public debate on just what are our national interests in that part of the world. If oil is one of them, is it also in the national interest to use force to control that resource at its source? Is Israel really a country important to the United States, or just important to certain powerful but parochial special interests? And, what has truly been the results of Israel’s US subsidized policies toward the Palestinians? Finally, is it an offense warranting impeachment when the president lies, misleads, distorts information and then sends American troops to their deaths based on that presentation? These issues are important to all Americans. They deserve to be publically aired. Progressives should demand these subjects be taken up at all levels of government from town and county councils on up. Media outlets should be picketed with demands for open debate on foreign policy. And, most importantly, Americans should insist that the incoming Democratic administration promote the necessary public debate on national interests and foreign policy formulation. If we ignore this, and allow things to go on as they are, then we can expect nothing but continuing disaster.
By Lawrence Davidson Professor of History West Chester University West Chester, PA ldavidson a/t wcupa d o t edu
Unlikelihood of a Shiite-Majority Cabinet in Iraq: 1939
A little bit of irony from the British archives on Iraq.
"Muhammad al-Sadr, the President of the Senate, is believed to aspire one day to head a predominantly Shia Cabinet, but,though his name has been mentioned recently in political circles as a possible Prime Minister, the Sunni effendi element is unlikely ever to accept a Shiah 'alim as Prime Minister. It is also doubtful whether Muhammad al-Sadr could ever succeed in consolidating Shiah opinion behind him."
Basil Newton, British Ambassodor to Iraq/ Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary, Baghdad, December 8, 1939 /End
For "cont'd" postings, click here.
With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, we have entered the age of micro-wars.
The first wars that Israel fought with its Arab neighbors were conventional struggles in which infantry, artillery, armor and air forces played central roles.
Israel's enemies had few effective tools in the 1950s and 1960s. Abdel Nasser encouraged Palestinian resistance from Gaza in 1955, but it was more harassment than a serious military operation. The Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian conventional armies were what Israel's leaders worried about. Jordan was no match for the Israelis and it had a history of secret agreements with the Zionist leaders, so its military was only a threat when, as in 1967, other Arab leaders convinced the Jordanian leadership to join in a collective effort. Cont'd
Israel's policies were not merely defensive, contrary to the propaganda one constantly hears from New York. Moshe Sharrett's diaries demonstrate conclusively the expansionist character of the regime. Israel's leaders badly wanted the Sinai Peninsula and therefore a commanding position over the trade of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal in the 1950s and 1960s. There was also some petroleum there. Israel used superiority in armor and air power in 1956 to take the Sinai, in conjunction with an orchestrated Anglo-French attack on Egypt's position in the Suez Canal (which Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized that summer). President Dwight D. Eisenhower, afraid that vestiges of Old World colonial thinking would push the Arabs into the arms of the Soviets, made Israel relinquish its prize. But hawks in Israel took the Sinai from Egypt again in the 1967 war, in which Israel again demonstrated that armor plus air superiority always defeats armor that lacks air cover (Israel managed to destroy the Egyptian air force early in the war).
Egypt could not accept loss of its sovereign territory. As the largest Arab state, with a third of the Arab population, and a developing economic, technological and military capability, Egypt could not be dismissed. Its leader from 1970, Anwar El Sadat, found a way of striking back. Egypt launched the 1973 war as a surprise attack, and used sophisticated underwater sand-moving equipment to get across the canal and penetrate into the Sinai. By this time Egypt had Soviet SA-6 surface-to-air missiles that served as anti-aircraft batteries and was careful to keep its tanks under their umbrella. Had Egypt had a better air force, Egyptian armor could have rolled right into Israel proper in October of 1973. The Israeli cabinet is said to have feared it was the fall of the Third Kingdom. But even in the absence of a proper air force, the Soviet SAMs were a game-changer. I would argue that they were the difference between the crushing defeat of Egypt in 1967 and the draw-to-slight victory Cairo won in 1973.
The writing was on the wall. Israel could not have the Sinai. Egypt was too big and too increasingly powerful an enemy to continue to provoke it. 1973 settled that. The Egyptian public was tired of war and its expense, and so both sides were willing to conclude the Camp David Peace Treaty of 1978. Egypt got the Sinai back permanently. Israel escaped the most serious military threat in the region.
Israel's political tradition seeks expansion if possible; if not possible, it seeks a balance of power with its enemies. If that is not possible, it seeks to be held harmless from its avowed foes. If that is not possible, it is willing to wage total war to punish the enemy population until it accepts at least a cold peace. (I mean by "total war" war on the civilian population in which the guerrilla group is embedded, as for instance dropping a million cluster bombs on the farms of south Lebanon in 2006 or half-starving Gazan children in 2007-2008, meth
