Professor of Propaganda

The Lies of Alan Dershowitz

By RACHARD ITANI

In a characteristic op-ed, titled "Arithmetic of Pain", that would surprise neither his supporters nor his critics, published by the Wall Street Journal on 19 July 2006, Alan Dershowitz sinks to new lows of depravity and inhumanity in his long-standing hate-mongering and truth-twisting anti-Arab, pro-Israel crusade.

One need not go beyond the first paragraph to be hit by a dose of Dershowitz's typically one-sided, see-no-evil/hear-no-evil attitude when he tackles Israel-related subjects and issues. This eternally unbalanced pro-Israel disposition on his part does Israel no good, for it shows him to be a fundamentalist who has no time for truth and facts. His extremism therefore diminishes greatly the value of any "support" he may providing to Israel.

Dershowitz's first sentence gives his game away: "There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks." Anyone remotely familiar with Dershowitz's writings would know that he considers only Israel to be a Middle-Eastern democracy. This erroneous view is shared and perpetrated by most of the corporate Western media, and a distressingly large percentage of the American public. However, Lebanon also, is a Middle-Eastern democracy, and an older one than Israel at that. And since Dershowitz's statements must apply to all democracies for them to have any useful validity, the Lebanese would be, should be, and are indeed equally justified when they decide to no longer "tolerate (Israeli) missiles fired at" their country.

Likewise, Palestine is another Middle-Eastern democracy, certified as such by no less than former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, whose authority on these matters, through his work at the Carter Center, which certifies dozens of international elections, is well established. Aren't Palestinians therefore equally justified in "taking every reasonable step to stop (Israeli) attacks against their cities"?

Alan Dershowitz, intelligent though he may be otherwise, is incapable of entertaining such logical thoughts. It is said that the mark of a civilized mind consists in its ability to entertain two opposing ideas simultaneously. When it comes to Israel, Dershowitz is incapable of entertaining two supporting ideas simultaneously, if such a consideration would make them equally valid for both Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Being a good propagandist, Dershowitz sets the stage early in favor of Israel by defining its actions, and its actions alone, a priori as "reasonable." Thus, you already know that the rest of his piece will be dedicated to reinforcing that assertion: only Israel is reasonable; the Palestinians and Lebanese never are.

Dershowitz writes therefore: "The big question raised by Israel's military actions in Lebanon is what is 'reasonable.' The answer, according to the laws of war, is that it is reasonable to attack military targets, so long as every effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. If the objectives cannot be achieved without some civilian casualties, these must be "proportional" to the civilian casualties that would be prevented by the military action."

Thus, Dershowitz implies that Israel's assault on Lebanon, which has killed close to 500 innocent civilians, compared with 18 Israeli civilians killed by Hizbollah's response, is not only "reasonable", but "proportional." This is a typical racist argument, which states that when you kill one of ours, and we kill 20 of yours, our action is by definition reasonable and proportional. In other words, racists do not assign equal value to the lives of "others" compared to theirs. The U.S., of course, is equally steeped in this racist mind-set, with many Americans continuing to perpetrate Jimmy Carter's assertion that there was "equal and mutual destruction" between American and Vietnam. The numbers involved speak to the racism and inhumanity that such a statement represents: Americans killed: 52,000; Vietnamese killed: over 2.5 million! "Equal and mutual" in Jimmy Carter's racist vocabulary become "Reasonable and Proportional" when Dershowitz applies the terms to Israel's actions.

One need not go beyond the third paragraph of his piece to confirm Alan Dershowitz for the propagandist and liar-on-behalf-of-Israel that he is, since he offers the reader an outright lie. He writes: " democratic nations (...) deliberately locate their military bases away from civilian population centers. Israel has its air force, nuclear facilities and large army bases in locations as remote as anything can be in that country." Therefore, he adds: "It is possible for an enemy to attack Israeli military targets without inflicting "collateral damage" on its civilian population." In reality, Israel does no such thing, i.e. all of its military installations, like ammunition factories for example, are not "located... as remotely as anything can be in the country." Some, as Jonathan Cook confirms in one of his recent articles entitled "Five Myths", are located quite close to the city where Cook lives.

Indeed, neither does the U.S. locate its military factories "as remotely as anything can be" from its population centers. However, stating that Israel locates its military installations away from civilian centers, enables Dershowitz to state that all attacks from the Arab side that result in civilian casualties are consequently --and by definition again--not reasonable, since the Arabs could have restricted their attacks to military facilities that are away from population centers. This sets the stage for Dershowitz and Israeli apologists to paint all Arab attacks against Israel as "terrorist" in nature. Furthermore, since these "cowardly Arabs" hide amongst the population, when "reasonable" Israel attacks them, it cannot avoid "collateral damage" no matter how disproportional its actions may be. At any rate, Dershowitz cannot even countenance that Israel could ever engage in unreasonable or disproportional actions.

The above is sufficient to cast at least a reasonable doubt on Dershowitz's assertions and statements that justify Israel's every crime, including the obvious and numerous war-crimes that it has been committing in Lebanon and in Palestine. By the way, dropping leaflets inviting populations to abandon their houses, villages, towns and region, before Israel bombs and razes these places to the ground, is not the sign of a "civilized" nation either, as the Dershowitzes of the world proclaim. Emptying a whole region of its inhabitants, as Israel is attempting to do in South Lebanon Lebanon, creating close to one million refugees (out of a total population of less than 4 million) is defined under international law and the Geneva Conventions as a "war crime." Another word for it is "Ethnic Cleansing," which was one of the charges for which Slobodan Milocevic was being prosecuted by the International Criminal Court before his untimely death, while the West, including the USA, cheered the court on.

Alan Dershowitz is one of the most prominent Arab haters, Islamophobes, and unconditional war-mongering cheer-leaders of Israel's criminal actions. On this basis alone, he cannot be described as a "true" friend of Israel. From their cushy offices and comfortable homes in the US, the Dershowitzes of the world will gladly and readily fight the Arabs to the last drop of Israeli blood. All the gains that these cynical apologists seem to have achieved for Israel, are short-term and ephemeral for a simple reason: they are not based on reason and humanity, but on racism and hate. Also, when Alan Dershowitz is faced with the need to discuss an issue that involves Israel, he first checks his logical and moral brains at the door, not to mention his heart. This brings to mind one of Albert Einstein's famous quips when he said there were only two things about which he was sure -- the infinity of the universe, and the infinity of human stupidity. Then he backtracked and said he couldn't be sure about the universe. He might as well have been speaking about Dershowitz's heart.

Israel has been committing unending and ever escalating violence against its Arab neighbors for decades. That the Arabs have always had to react, and that the Palestinian and Lebanese people have taken it into their hands to create an effective resistance to Israel's huge war machine, ought to surprise no one. Yes, I know: in popular mythology propagated by Israel's propaganda machine, it's always Israel that "responds" to the provocation of Arab "terrorists", and it's Israel that has had to fend off unprovoked Arab attacks against it. This cannot be further from the truth. But to see the truth you need the eyes of a humanist, not those of a racist or those of a self-serving usurper and military occupier of someone else's ancestral homeland.

American and Israeli propagandists never miss a chance to repeat that Arabs only understand the language of power. In reality, it's Israel --and America-- that only understands the language of violence. Israel's first reaction to any difficulty is to use extreme force and to cause death and destruction. Demonstrably, diplomacy is never its preferred modus operandi. Far from being "the continuation of diplomacy through other means", war is for Israel "the replacement of diplomacy by all means." Israel could have decided to live in peace with its neighbors, were it not for its expansionist, neocolonial policies in search of ever more "lebensraum." Now it wants to solve its problems by "eliminating" Hamas, Hizbollah, and preferably all Palestinians (there are direct quotes from Israeli ministers advocating the eradication of "all" Palestinians", children included, because "all are guilty.") In the past week, a large number of columnists writing in Israeli newspapers have called on Tsahal to level all villages in South Lebanon "on the heads of their inhabitants if necessary." As reported by the BBC, one if Israel's ministers, "Eli Yishai of the Shas party, said that after warnings had been given, 'we must not enter villages where Hezbollah terrorists are hiding before we have turned them into sand boxes."

The last time someone put in motion the process to bring about such a final solution, it was Jews who were at the receiving end of a terrible genocide. Now that Israelis have acquired enormous power, including more than 300 atomic war-heads, they have succumbed to hubris, forgetting that according to the rules of Greek Mythology, Hubris is inevitably and inexorably followed by Nemesis.

Finally, Dershowitz is one of the greatest practitioners of Orwellian double-speak: for him, "Occupation does not cause terrorism, but terrorism seems to cause occupation." To borrow the title of Norman Finkelstein's recent book, the man has truly moved "beyond chutzpah." And beyond the pale. This is one brazen and cynical up-ender of historical truth and of logical thought, for whom war is peace, and lie is truth. Such Orwellian misstatements are the truth-twisting arrows that fill Alan Dershowitz's immoral quiver. Those who applaud Dershowitz and cheer him on as he continues to spill his venomous dribble on both Arabs and reasonable Jews, would do well to wake up and turn their heads and minds away from such an out-and-out lying, war-mongering, Israel-hurting racist.

Violence is never the answer. Nor is racism. Nor is hate. Alan Dershowitz is a proponent of all three. Israelis and sympathetic Jews must finally realize that Dershowitz and other uncritical apologists of Israel are neither doing them nor the world any favors.

Quite the opposite is true.

Rachard Itani can be reached at: racharitani@yahoo.com

Check his site, he puts the pro-war crowd to shame:

http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/politics.html

Gilad Atzmon - Pour out your fury upon the people of Lebanon and Gaza

13.7.07

Two weeks ago it was Palestinian militants who abducted a legitimate military target, an Israeli soldier. Yesterday it was a similar overwhelmingly orchestrated heroic attack by Hezbollah guerrilla fighters. Both attacks are there to send a message of resistance: Israel will never succeed in imposing its sickening unilateral notion of ‘peace’. Indeed, the unilateral disengagement may have had a magical effect on the Israeli voters as well as some Zionised western leaders such as Bush, Blair and Merkel. Yet, the inhabitants of Gaza and the villagers of Southern Lebanon are slightly less impressed with the Israeli inclination towards peace. In Gaza and in Southern Lebanon it is rather clear that Arab resistance forces will oppose the Israeli unilateral agenda ‘til the end of time. They all know that as much as it takes two to tango, peace will never prevail unless the Palestinian cause is properly addressed. In short, the different forms of Israeli unilateral disengagements from Lebanon, Gaza or even the West Bank (to come) are not going to provide Israel with peace. Quite the opposite; Arabs are no fools, they know very well that Israel escaped Lebanon after being militarily humiliated for two decades. They know as well that Sharon ran away from Gaza not exactly because he was searching for peace. Palestinians also know that it is just a question of time before that happens in the West Bank. If to be precise, since 1973 Israel’s power of deterrence is shrinking. Since 1973 Israel hasn’t managed to defeat any of its enemies. On the contrary, time after time it is the enemies of Israel who are able to dictate Israeli political and tactical manoeuvres. In the last two weeks it has been two relatively small paramilitary organisations who use guerrilla techniques who managed to bring Israel to unleash its full military might against innocent civilians both in Gaza and Lebanon.

Yet, the Israeli reaction to attacks by Palestinian militants and Hezbollah is rather bizarre. Although, both Palestinian militants and Hezbollah were originally targeting legitimate military targets, Israeli retaliation was clearly aiming against civilian targets, civil infrastructures and mass killing directed against an innocent population. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that this is not really the way to win a war or confront that particular sort of combat known as guerrilla warfare.

I would argue that once again the Israeli government serves us with a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the Israeli collective psyche. I will try to elaborate on this issue.

Due to some clear historical circumstances, the Israeli army was originally formed to combat Arab armies. It was designed to win conventional war in the battlefield. It was set up as well to exhaust Israel’s neighbours’ will to fight while exercising some overwhelming air superiority and nuclear threatening policies. Since the end of the cold war, things changed. Israel isn’t threatened anymore by its neighbouring states. Moreover, in the most recent years it has become clear that it is actually the Palestinian people who will eventually shatter the dream of a Jewish national state.

Strangely enough, Israel has never adopted or revised its military doctrine to fit into the new emerging conditions. Indeed it retrained large parts of its fighting units as policing forces, it transformed some of its tanks into policing vehicles. Yet, it has never gone through a vast military doctrine shift. Very much like the Wehrmacht at the time of WWII, the IDF is still a classic follower of the offensive military doctrine. Hitherto, rather than winning in the battlefield, the IDF is now hopelessly exhausting itself in two fronts fighting relatively small paramilitary organisations. But the situation can get worse, it is rather possible that Palestinian heroic enthusiasm will spread to the West Bank. When this happens, the IDF will find itself engaged in a total war just a few kilometres from Israel’s most densely populated centres. Seemingly the so-called ‘strongest army in the Middle East’ is fighting a desperate war it can never win, neither tactically nor morally.

Tactically, we have enough historic references to conclude that no colonial army has ever won against guerrilla warfare. The reason is simple, the more destruction a colonial army spreads, the more popular the guerrilla fighters become amongst their surrounding supportive population. This is absolutely the case in Gaza and in Beirut today. The more carnage there is in Gaza, the stronger the Hamas becomes. The more bombs dropped over Beirut’s Airport, the more will young men be willing to join the Hezbollah.

But it goes further, both the Palestinian militants and the Hezbollah were very clever in picking pure military targets. While in the past, the Palestinian paramilitary groups were typically associated with suicidal attacks against Israeli civilians, this time it was Israeli soldiers and pure military posts that were targeted. In other words, it is rather impossible to dismiss the fact that Palestinian militants and the Hezbollah were actually operating as legitimate resistance paramilitary groups fighting a colonial army and occupation forces.

However, reading the news from the Middle East, it is rather obvious that the Israeli government has no clear agenda to counter the current daring military operations against its army and if this isn’t enough, the IDF has no means to counter such guerrilla assaults. Today’s merciless collateral damage in Beirut as well as in Gaza proves that at least militarily, Israel is in total despair. It has neither the political nor the military answer to counter Arab resistance. But here comes the catch; Israel doesn’t need an answer as such, it doesn’t even look for one.

Israel is a racially orientated democracy. Its leaders are engaged in one thing only, i.e. maintenance of the their political power. As far as the Israeli political game is concerned, the rule is very simple, the more Arab blood you have on your hands the more you are suited to get on with your governing job. This rule obviously was in favour of Rabin, Sharon, Barak and Netanyahu. Olmert and Peretz are still quite far behind. Both the prime minister and his defence minister lack some real experience in military and security matters. Hence they have a lot of catching up to do.

In other words, Peretz and Olmert have to provide the Israeli people with a glorious spectacle of merciless retaliation. They have to prove to their keen voters that they have internalised the real biblical meaning of ‘an eye for an eye’. Looking at the carnage in Beirut today it somehow seems as if they even try to give the old Hebraic say a new meaning. As devastating as it may sound, this is exactly what the Israelis want them to do. Within democratic Israel the biblical call "pour out your fury upon the goyim” is translated into a Jewish secular pragmatic political practice. This isn’t sad. This is a real tragedy. And I wonder whether there is anyone out there who is still overwhelmed with the Israeli unilateral peace agenda?

He was humiliated in debate with Noam Chomsky, who proved far superior re: intellect and had a breadth of knowledge on the issues. Dersh is typical reactionary, black & white thinking right wing simpleton.

At least two things leap out of your list as mindless right-wing bullshit:

April 1986: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed a discotheque frequented by U.S. servicemen in West Berlin, injuring hundreds and killing two, including a U.S. soldier.

December 1988: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground. (Then came an amazing, historic pause in Muslim extremists' relentless war on America after

Nupe, wrong. These were false flag jobs by the Western intel underworld, probably Mossad, trying to set Qaddafi up for US "retaliation". It worked of course. A formation of F-111 fighter-bombers descended on Tripoli, Benghazi airport, etc. with laser-guided bombs, one of which killed Qaddafi's two-year-old adopted daughter. They were trying to murder Qaddafi but missed. This despite the obvious stupidity of assassinating heads of state. Hey, the US is **spay-shull**. We kin do ennuh-thin (what idiots like you have always believed)

Since you're probably not much on reading, here's a video that lays it out:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/04/10/18143491.php

More supportive documents:

http://www.washington-report.org/archives/december01/0112017.html

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1855852005

http://www.trinicenter.com/oops/lockerbie.html

Dissident ex-Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky, in his eye-popping book 'By Way Of Deception,' talks about Mossad setting Qaddafi up for US retaliation:

http://tinyurl.com/6rd29

See there what I just did, Sparky? I backed my shit up with MULTIPLE LINKS to some heavy-hitting sources. You should try doing this some time, just to amaze me.

So there's two items on your list that are flimsy bullshit. The Achille Lauro incident is also suspect. How many more of these are bullshit? No telling -- God knows you're too stupid to know the difference. All the thought you put into this was to hack-and-paste this bullshit off that bitch's site

http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/welcome.cgi

Wow, how impressive! Yeah, you're jes takin mah breath ay-way!

Meanwhile here's the legally documented terrorist record of **JUST ONE** of the HUNDREDS of CIA proxy terrorist gangs. Have fun wading through this shit. Notice how your terror-psycho friends here were active all over the world, but mainly in the US. That's right, the good ol' CIA terrorized US citizens

http://www.tkb.org/MoreGroupIncidents.jsp?groupID=3925&sortBy=3&sortOrder=0&x=39&y=14

Here's another huge CIA black op (this one killed as many as 86 people at a time, random civilians of course). For the benefit of idiots like you there are nice video links at the bottom of this page:

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/documents/collection_gladio/book_launch_new.htm

Make sure to call and tell us when your kicked ass lands on the moon, asshole

From a blog? Which site was that?

The Indybay page is merely a PORTAL to a professionally produced documentary film that interviews many dozens of eye-witnesses, government officials, Western intel officers, etc. etc. Don't play this shit of dissing Indybay, which is completely beside the point. No no zio-liar, diss the VIDEO

This just more of your characteristic desperate rat-hole jumping, that's all

Uh-huh, Ostrovsky "has no cred" because he showcases what a bunch of criminal psychos you all are, just like Finkelstein, Vanunu, Dennis Bernstein, Ralph Schoenman, etc., yup, uh-huh

"Lets see confessions- lets see peer reviewed documents- lets see real evidence"

Oh, just go fuck yourself! I've already documented my argument 50 times better than any of you assholes EVER do

Here' some goo d websites(for starters) that easily debunk the lies and propaganda that these right wing loonies vomit:

http://www.oreilly-sucks.com/

http://www.lies.com/wp/2003/10/23/bill-oreilly-lies/

Here's a long list of the lies of Bill O' dumbass debunked:

http://www.sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com/archive.html

Here's Ann the idiot's lies torn apart:

http://www.anncoulter.blogspot.com/

Here's a guy tearing apart Ann's lack of acedemic rigor (and he's a right winger)

http://slannder.homestead.com/

That oughta get ya starter, there, buddy. TRy reading, it really doesn't hurt and it may be more fun than regurgitating AM-nut radio propaganda talking points.

Just wondering. Are you going to comment on the original post?

Looks like some of Derhsey's lies are put up to the light.

1. Hizzbolah has hidden its personnel, its missiles, and its weapons among the civilian population. The nine members of the Abu Salmiya family were not the targets of Israel- however they became victims because they were hosting the top leadershi of Hizzbollah in their basement. There often is a price for collabertion.

How many times will you spam these talking points?

Are you insinuating that the hundreds of dead cvillians/children are the "price for collaboration", and secondly, that they were all collaborating?? C'mon.

I'm gagging on the bullshit.

2. Israel has evacuated one third of its population to areas beyond the range of Hizzbolah missiles.

And approx 3/4 of a million people are displaced in Lebanon....and still many killed.

Now, what about the rest of the article?

As you probably don't know, since i suspect you haven't been in a library in a long time, librarians are on the forefront of resistence to many aspects of the Patriot Act. References included upon request.

You should heed your own words, Tia bay-beee. You're the one around here whose loyalties obviously lie with another country, with which you're effectively collaborating.

America and Americans lost me when they "elected" Bush, or rather accepted Bush's election without a fight.

You're the one trying to erode this country's most hallowed legal principles for Israel's benefit. This little information-suppression club here is one you belong to, is it not?

http://www.librariansforfairness.org/

Here's a little something you don't know: The Palestinian propaganda machine churns out videos and CD's that are "donated" free to schools and libraries.... We are working on providing balance. Once again, references provided upon request.

So much for free access to all kinds of information and viewpoints. Obviously this principle can't be allowed to include information and viewpoints of which you zios disapprove. Unthinkable!

Its about balance. Its not about censorship.

But this was a convienient way to avoid the actual subject, wasn't it? You've been discussing this book, based on an Internet review, and you've never read it. Its widely available, cheaply available, and yet, just like with "Eco-defense" you claim its supressed. Evidence indicates otherwise. Its shoddy research on your part, and I'd fail you, you naughty, naughty boy, if you were a student in my class. Don't jump to sloppy conclusions.

Let's try it again, slower:

(Your quote)1. Hizzbolah has hidden its personnel, its missiles, and its weapons among the civilian population. The nine members of the Abu Salmiya family were not the targets of Israel- however they became victims because they were hosting the top leadershi of Hizzbollah in their basement. There often is a price for collabertion.

How many times will you spam these talking points?

Are you insinuating that the hundreds of dead cvillians/children are the "price for collaboration", and secondly, that they were all collaborating?? C'mon.

I'm gagging on the bullshit.

(Your quote)2. Israel has evacuated one third of its population to areas beyond the range of Hizzbolah missiles.

And approx 3/4 of a million people are displaced in Lebanon....and still many killed.

Now, what about the rest of the article? Next?

>Hizzbolah has hidden its personnel, its missiles, and its weapons among the civilian population.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1937599.stm

Thursday, 18 April, 2002, 14:24 GMT 15:24 UK

Israel accused of using 'human shields'

Israeli troops patrol Jenin with sniffer dog

By Sebastian Usher

BBC Middle East analyst

A leading human rights group has accused the Israeli army of routinely using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Human Rights Watch said the tactic could be considered a war crime.

Israel has rejected the accusations.

In a 24-page report, based on the testimony of more than 50 witnesses, Human Rights Watch documents how Israeli soldiers have forced Palestinians at gunpoint to open suspicious packages, knock on suspects' doors and search the houses of Palestinians wanted by Israel.

The report concentrates on four separate raids between late last year and the first months of this year.

But it says the practice has continued in the current Israeli offensive.

'Targets for retribution'

In two of the raids it investigated, Human Rights Watch says Israeli soldiers used children under the age of 18 to approach the houses of suspects.

In another raid, the group says a Palestinian was shot in the leg after failing to lead Israeli soldiers to his brother, a suspected militant.

The organisation says that in addition to exposing those Palestinians they used as human shields to the risk of being caught in crossfire, the tactic also put their lives in danger by identifying them as informers, leaving them targets for possible retribution.

Israel defends its raids in the Palestinian territories as a means of stopping suicide bomb attacks.

The Israeli army has dismissed the new report as preposterous, saying it has never used Palestinians as human shields.

But Human Rights Watch says the Israeli denial is inadequate, noting that its repeated requests for the Israeli army to give its testimony for the report have been turned down.

Alan Dershowitz sinks to new lows of depravity and inhumanity in his long-standing hate-mongering and truth-twisting anti-Arab, pro-Israel crusade....

An ad homimen is not a rebuttal. At no point in his essay does Dershowitz resort to insults and name calling.

One need not go beyond the first paragraph to be hit by a dose of Dershowitz's typically one-sided, see-no-evil/hear-no-evil attitude when he tackles Israel-related subjects and issues.

Once again, playground tactics of name calling devoid of facts.



This eternally unbalanced pro-Israel disposition on his part does Israel no good, for it shows him to be a fundamentalist who has no time for truth and facts. His extremism therefore diminishes greatly the value of any "support" he may providing to Israel.

Also appeal to emotion- conveys no facts and does not dispute anything Dershowitz says

And since Dershowitz's statements must apply to all democracies for them to have any useful validity, the Lebanese would be, should be, and are indeed equally justified when they decide to no longer "tolerate (Israeli) missiles fired at" their country.

Evewry country has the right to defend itself. That is what Dershowitz said. Straw man argument

Aren't Palestinians therefore equally justified in "taking every reasonable step to stop (Israeli) attacks against their cities"?

The Palestinians, in response to the disengement from Gaza and the gift of 14 million dollars worth of greenhouses, to jump start their economy responded by launched thousands of missiles against Israel. They have been the aggressors in this conflict.

Alan Dershowitz, intelligent though he may be otherwise, is incapable of entertaining such logical thoughts.

An ad hominim is not a rebuttal.

Being a good propagandist, Dershowitz sets the stage early in favor of Israel by defining its actions, and its actions alone, a priori as "reasonable."

It was clear after the kidnapped soldiers were denied their Geneva Convention rights, that negotiations were not likely. How would most countries respond to an attack on their country and the kidnapping of their citizens?



Thus, you already know that the rest of his piece will be dedicated to reinforcing that assertion: only Israel is reasonable; the Palestinians and Lebanese never are.

Straw man argument

Dershowitz writes therefore: "The big question raised by Israel's military actions in Lebanon is what is 'reasonable.' The answer, according to the laws of war, is that it is reasonable to attack military targets, so long as every effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. If the objectives cannot be achieved without some civilian casualties, these must be "proportional" to the civilian casualties that would be prevented by the military action."

Hezzobalah has a wide variety of sophisticated weapons including lazar guided anti-tank missiles, rocket propelled grenades, supplied by Iran. This weapons are hidden among the civilian population. Unfortunately, the war is in the streets and in the cities. Yes, civilian deaths are tragic, but Hezzbollah chose the front. But if they amassed their forces in Southern Lebanon, they would lose the propaganda value of their civilian deaths.



This is a typical racist argument, which states that when you kill one of ours, and we kill 20 of yours, our action is by definition reasonable and proportional. In other words, racists do not assign equal value to the lives of "others" compared to theirs.

If you measured “right and wrong”, or “victims and agressors” by numbers of casualties, wouldn’t German be one the victim of World War II?



One need not go beyond the third paragraph of his piece to confirm Alan Dershowitz for the propagandist and liar-on-behalf-of-Israel that he is, since he offers the reader an outright lie.

An ad hominem is not arebuttal

He writes: " democratic nations (...) deliberately locate their military bases away from civilian population centers. Israel has its air force, nuclear facilities and large army bases in locations as remote as anything can be in that country." Therefore, he adds: "It is possible for an enemy to attack Israeli military targets without inflicting "collateral damage" on its civilian population." In reality, Israel does no such thing, i.e. all of its military installations, like ammunition factories for example, are not "located... as remotely as anything can be in the country." Some, as Jonathan Cook confirms in one of his recent articles entitled "Five Myths", are located quite close to the city where Cook lives.

Israel is a tiny country- roughly the size of New Jersey or Connecticut. If you exclude Judea and Sameria, the east west span is often less than 20 miles. Under these circumstances, nothing is all that far from anything else. In as far as it is possible, Israel keeps its military installations far away from the civilian population. A factory is something different- a factory employs civilians - if it were located away from a population center, it would be difficult to staff it.

This sets the stage for Dershowitz and Israeli apologists to paint all Arab attacks against Israel as "terrorist" in nature.

Straw man argument.

Furthermore, since these "cowardly Arabs" hide amongst the population, when "reasonable" Israel attacks them, it cannot avoid "collateral damage" no matter how disproportional its actions may be.

This is true

By the way, dropping leaflets inviting populations to abandon their houses, villages, towns and region, before Israel bombs and razes these places to the ground, is not the sign of a "civilized" nation either, as the Dershowitzes of the world proclaim. Emptying a whole region of its inhabitants, as Israel is attempting to do in South Lebanon Lebanon, creating close to one million refugees (out of a total population of less than 4 million) is defined under international law and the Geneva Conventions as a "war crime."



And 1/3 of Israel has been emptied of its population. Therefore, using this logic, Lebanon (hezzbollah) is also guilty of war crimes. Of course, depriving POW’s of their Genva convention rights also is a war crime.



Lets analyze this in the context of

by Dershowitz's essay • Saturday, Jul. 29, 2006 at 7:25 PM

There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks. The big question raised by Israel's military actions in Lebanon is what is "reasonable." The answer, according to the laws of war, is that it is reasonable to attack military targets, so long as every effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. If the objectives cannot be achieved without some civilian casualties, these must be "proportional" to the civilian casualties that would be prevented by the military action.

This is all well and good for democratic nations that deliberately locate their military bases away from civilian population centers. Israel has its air force, nuclear facilities and large army bases in locations as remote as anything can be in that country. It is possible for an enemy to attack Israeli military targets without inflicting "collateral damage" on its civilian population. Hezbollah and Hamas, by contrast, deliberately operate military wings out of densely populated areas. They launch antipersonnel missiles with ball-bearing shrapnel, designed by Syria and Iran to maximize civilian casualties, and then hide from retaliation by living among civilians. If Israel decides not to go after them for fear of harming civilians, the terrorists win by continuing to have free rein in attacking civilians with rockets. If Israel does attack, and causes civilian casualties, the terrorists win a propaganda victory: The international community pounces on Israel for its "disproportionate" response. This chorus of condemnation actually encourages the terrorists to operate from civilian areas.

While Israel does everything reasonable to minimize civilian casualties - not always with success - Hezbollah and Hamas want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides. Islamic terrorists, a diplomat commented years ago, "have mastered the harsh arithmetic of pain. . . . Palestinian casualties play in their favor and Israeli casualties play in their favor." These are groups that send children to die as suicide bombers, sometimes without the child knowing that he is being sacrificed. Two years ago, an 11-year-old was paid to take a parcel through Israeli security. Unbeknownst to him, it contained a bomb that was to be detonated remotely. (Fortunately the plot was foiled.)

This misuse of civilians as shields and swords requires a reassessment of the laws of war. The distinction between combatants and civilians - easy when combatants were uniformed members of armies that fought on battlefields distant from civilian centers - is more difficult in the present context. Now, there is a continuum of "civilianality": Near the most civilian end of this continuum are the pure innocents - babies, hostages and others completely uninvolved; at the more combatant end are civilians who willingly harbor terrorists, provide material resources and serve as human shields; in the middle are those who support the terrorists politically, or spiritually.

The laws of war and the rules of morality must adapt to these realities. An analogy to domestic criminal law is instructive: A bank robber who takes a teller hostage and fires at police from behind his human shield is guilty of murder if they, in an effort to stop the robber from shooting, accidentally kill the hostage. The same should be true of terrorists who use civilians as shields from behind whom they fire their rockets. The terrorists must be held legally and morally responsible for the deaths of the civilians, even if the direct physical cause was an Israeli rocket aimed at those targeting Israeli citizens.

Israel must be allowed to finish the fight that Hamas and Hezbollah started, even if that means civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. A democracy is entitled to prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism. Israel will - and should - take every precaution to minimize civilian casualties on the other side. On July 16, Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, announced there will be new "surprises," and the Aska Martyrs Brigade said that it had developed chemical and biological weapons that could be added to its rockets. Should Israel not be allowed to pre-empt their use?

Israel left Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. These are not "occupied" territories. Yet they serve as launching pads for attacks on Israeli civilians. Occupation does not cause terrorism, then, but terrorism seems to cause occupation. If Israel is not to reoccupy to prevent terrorism, the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority must ensure that these regions cease to be terrorist safe havens.

That is quite simply hilarious. International law and international bodies are OK when the pro-war pro-israel side wants to justify Israel's terrorist actions, but bad any other time. You can't have it both ways, Charlie.

Also, your quote, "The Palestinians, in response to the disengement from Gaza and the gift of 14 million dollars worth of greenhouses, to jump start their economy responded by launched thousands of missiles against Israel. They have been the aggressors in this conflict."

This propaganda talking point fails to mention that while israel did this, they continued confiscating land in the West Bank. Metaphor: If you are beating two of my sisters and you stop beating one of them (while still beating theother), don't try to convince me you are such a great person for stopping beating one of them. You must stop beating both of them, then I will not necc. think you are so great--because you are now just doing the right thing by not beating either--which is what you should have done all along.

You can't have it both ways, Charlie. Which is it? International law=good, or international law=bad. Does Israel have to adhere to international law and international bodiesw, or not....let mne know when you figure out a non-hypocritical answer to that one, child.

Take your time, and put on your thinking cap, I know this will be hard for ya.

Dismissed.

We'll repeat slowly, and w/ otu typos for you, 'cause I know it's hard:

You can't have it both ways, Charlie. Which is it? International law=good, or international law=bad. Does Israel have to adhere to international law and international bodies, or not....let me know when you figure out a non-hypocritical answer to that one, child.

Take your time, and put on your thinking cap, I know this will be hard for ya.

Dismissed.

I'll check back after awhile. See if you can do something besides try to change the subject on this one.

By this logic, that means that anyone is a legitmate target. Also, the Patriot Act is not an international law or body. International laws usu. refer to UN, Geneva, ICC. Now, in regards to violations, I think both sides have been guilty in this conflict....but the mass murder by Israel dwarfs any other.

(1.) Because they cause terror.

(2.) That terror is intended to influence events.

terrorist acts?

Its fits you criteria.

Here's an incredibly twisted screed being pushed by Tia's "anti-bias" AIPAC front:

Why The Left Hates Israel

by Vasko Kohlmeyer

http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18908/Why_The_Left_Hates_Israel.html

See how many Big Lies you can spot

Alice sighed wearily.

`I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers"

More of Tia's desperate hole-jumping

No squirming Tia, librarians AS A WHOLE are "on the forefront of resistence to many aspects of the Patriot Act,"

YOU are not in line with that ethic AT ALL, and if you were to follow your heart (e.g. burn every title by Edward Said) your ass would be flipping burgers.

Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence. You have no idea who I am, or what I've been up to. I'll just say you are wrong, completely wrong, and leave it at that. And I have no intention of supplying you with a resume.



Tia: "America and Americans lost me when they "elected" Bush, or rather accepted Bush's election without a fight."

This is just your lame greazy (is that a combination of greasy and lazy, or is it a real word?) excuse of the moment for what amounts to treason. I wonder how you rationalized it before Bush came along.

I was fairly apolitical, and limited my activism to environmental and women's issues.

You're out to suppress the Palestinians case, that's all.

The Palestinian case is based on a series of historical falacies and lies. I prefer to bring those to light so people can make intelligent decisons. But you and i are both two state solutions believers, as is Toady, so we've come to the same place from different directions.

"There are many paths up the mountain, but the view from the top is stil the same"

I really don't have time to deal with this now...so don't do your victory dance quite yet. i'm not through with you.

ens of millions of people around the world, and especially the people of the Middle East, are sickened and outraged by the images coming form Qana, Lebanon, where last night Israeli war planes leveled homes and buildings throughout the village while people slept, killing scores of civilians, including at least 35 children.

This attack was not a "mistake." Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, today made it clear that the people of Lebanon will be bombed so long as Hezbollah exists. By this twisted logic, the Lebanese people are responsible for their own deaths, including the deaths of their own children, at the hands of Israeli airstrikes.

The Israeli military has been supplied with a huge array of weapons by the United States, including the rush order of 5,000 lb. bombs in recent days.

According to the AFP, "rescue workers with only their bare hands clawed through rubble of flattened homes and an underground shelter to find survivors while mothers hugged their dead children in a final hopeless embrace.... Israel, which has received staunch US backing since the conflict began on July 12, unleashed its firepower on Qana after flatly rejecting a UN call for a 72-hour truce to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Lebanon."

Hey mods: if you have to pull this, please be fair and pull the whole dialog

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

No squirming Tia, librarians AS A WHOLE are "on the forefront of resistence to many aspects of the Patriot Act," and this dominant professional culture is obviously the only thing keeping you closet Stalinists in check. YOU are not in line with that ethic AT ALL, and if you were to follow your heart (e.g. burn every title by Edward Said) your ass would be flipping burgers.

This org of yours is just modulating its sneaky-ass game, that's all. If the climate were to shift in favor of book-burning, they'd hand you your marching orders and you'd be right there chunking them on the pile just like a fucking robot. Your ilk is so brainwashable and soulless its incredible. You have no vague glimmering of what the phrase 'SELF-respect' truly means. You're just a wholehearted mental slave

"I'll just say you are wrong, completely wrong"

Oh yeah? then what are you doing having any connection with this CAMERA-clone information-watchdog outfit? You just will never grasp how full of shit you are, will you? Your "leftism" is just as scramble-brained as Becky's.

The New York times used to have a paper copy of the historic letter signed by many prominent Jews, including Albert Einstein, that roundly condemned the Israeli Jewish terrorists of the 1940s. Then one of your operative ilk got their hands on it and destroyed it so that now the bunch of you are claiming it never existed and is fraudulent.

Yeah, that's what you're like. It's obvious. That's why your supreme operatives, the neocons, are at the center of the program to turn this country into a fascist dictatorship. Turning on the Bushies means turning on the neocons directly and recognizing their rabid zionism as integral to that problem, but you just won't do it. You're too twisted in the head. So you end up being instrumentally complicit in exactly the thing you claim to condemn. This is just typical of how morally deranged you are. The bunch of you only go along with democracy, liberalism, and civil liberties just so long as they keep handing you everything goo-goo-baby and the Izzie-G-d want. That's why the neocons have become explicitly hostile to democracy here, just like the European fascists of the '20s and '30s

Jabotinsky's hero Mussolini, in his 1932 Italian Encyclopedia entry for "Fascism' (ghost-written by Italy's leading fascist intellectual Giovanni Gentile):

"...Fascism denies, in democracy, the absur[d]

conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in

the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth

of "happiness" and indefinite progress...."

"...Given that the nineteenth century was the century of

Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does

not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must

also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and

Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity

remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be

a century of authority...a century of Fascism. For if the

nineteenth century was a century of individualism it

may be expected that this will be the century of

collectivism and hence the century of the State..."

"The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the

State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism

conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison

with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to

be conceived of in their relation to the State. The

conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing

force, guiding the play and development, both material

and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force

limited to the function of recording results: on the other

hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has

itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called

the "ethic" State..."

Yup, your neocon idols are just plain simple fascists, just like all Jabotinskyites. That is, just like YOU.

Tia: "America and Americans lost me when they "elected" Bush, or rather accepted Bush's election without a fight."

This is just your lame greazy (means 'greasy,' but more disgusting) excuse of the moment for what amounts to treason. I wonder how you rationalized it before Bush came along. There are millions and millions of people here who think Bush is the anti-Christ and who still deserve your loyalty. Also, this is a LAND, a place, that has been very very good to you and to Jews as a whole. I would think this would garner some affection in return and some feelings of commitment, but for ZIONIST Jews it obviously doesn't. There is only one national entity that matters at all to you, and every other place is to be sucked dry by way of nourishing it. Meanwhile, America is the REAL zion. It's the best place the bunch of you have ever seen. It has made America's Jews the most privileged and wealthy per-median ethnic population in history, and now you zionists are blowing this sweet gig to bits because you are TOO FUCKING NUTS TO EVEN SEE IT!!!! Most of the American Jews who don't enjoy remarkable privilege have consciously forfeited it by fleeing to the country because they cannot stand the cities. You make noises about doing this and yet you cling to the city because you're just greedier than they are, that's all. You can't face the same sacrifices.

Tia: "The Palestinian propaganda machine churns out videos and CD's that are "donated" free to schools and libraries...."

Uh-huh, and this sort of thing is ALREADY being systematically contained from every quarter by the likes of you so that it doesn't have a thousandth of the impact on the American public as your own PR. Why shouldn't the Arab side be able to present its case over here? Their presentation doesn't have to be "balanced" in its delivery. Yours isn't. You get to scream from your rabid bully pulpit every day on nationwide television. Every time one of your elite operatives appears on that medium, they spew transparent Big Lies, which the US public now believes wholeheartedly because Goebbels' Big Lie theory was absolutely correct.

You're out to suppress the Palestinians case, that's all. This is your Stalinist censor side slithering right out in the open. Presentations in libraries are peanuts compared to your own screeching psycho daily-broadcasted rhetoric, but you can't stand even THIS MUCH of a counterbalance. It drives you obsessive maniacs into a frenzy. You'll only be 100% satisfied when you've succeeded in shutting them out of public discourse ABSOLUTELY, and the only thing holding you back from doing so far more aggressively is this country's pesky tradition of open information.

Tia: "Its about balance. Its not about censorship."

Uh-huh, and that's the same bullshit line spewed by your pals at MEMRI, CAMERA, etc., who have been INSTRUMENTAL in locking down the ban on symmetrical Palestinian representation in US mass media. This line you're dropping is just exoteric bullshit palmed off on the stupid cattle, engineered to make your Stalinist information agenda seem reasonable to them. And to you, of course. Brainwashing Jews as a whole into zio-fascist zealotry is much more strategic than merely duping the cattle. All of these AIPAC fronts keep CLAIMING they're about "checking pro-Arab bias," when what they are in fact frantically doing is advancing rabid PRO-ISRAEL bias. Your PR einsatzgruppen understand this perfectly, even if you're too stupid to figure it out

Tia: "You've been discussing this book, based on an Internet review, and you've never read it."

Uh-huh, and once again this is nothing but red-herring greased-rat bullshit, focussing on a niggling side issue of ONE SINGLE POINT of a bulldozer of information I presented, this in order to simply DISTRACT from what I said. Your arrogance is incredible! It's not me that's stupid, Tia

YOU ARE

That link wasn't "a review." It was a lengthy excerpt that absolutely supported the point I made. Now you're claiming scholarship requires me to read an entire book in order to excerpt from it. This is fucking patently ridiculous!! It's completely typical of the way you arrogantly twist any idea you can lay hands on

I've just demonstrated right here, once again, why you despise my analysis and seek to discredit it on contrived grounds. My scholarship TOTALLY FUCKS YOU UP LIKE A FREIGHT TRAIN. It exposes you for what you are and what you're part of, which are diametric opposites of what you imagine they are. You're just a brainwashed self-deluded dupe, a lemming jumping off a cliff along with everyone like you.

Humanitarian Intervention

The White Man's Burden?

By MICHAEL NEUMANN

If we look at the world through the eyes of a nouveau-imperialist, few things are more certain than that humanitarian intervention is the special and last prerogative of the white race (known in polite circles as The West). When the Americans, Canadians, British, French, Germans, Norwegians, Danes, Belgians, Spanish and Dutch go into Afghanistan(*), we can rest assured that the few dark faces will not spoil the party: the commanders, the decision-makers will be white, as will the the bulk of the crackers--crackers of every nation--who make up the rank and file. These are blessed circumstances. Killing, racial supremacy and morality--how often do we see these enjoyable items so closely, so irreproachably bound together?

This is why the humanitarian imperialist is so deeply offended when non-whites insolently usurp the humanitarian prerogative. Perhaps it is worse when there is an Iranian connection, because then it is necessary to ignore the fact that Iranians are not only white but (if the term has any legitimate meaning) Aryan. But ignorance conquers all, and these subtleties are lost on the good ole boys of the West (and the pseudo-West, i.e., Israel): The Iranians wear funny turbans. Hizballah leaders wear funny turbans. People who wear funny turbans aren't really white. So these guys aren't really white. Such are the joys of redneck logic. Yet the White Man's humanitarian burden could be Hizballah's burden as well.

Hizballah's raid on Israel may have sparked the current conflict in Lebanon, but it is also a very plausible case of humanitarian intervention. In the first place, it was apparently intended to help the Palestinians in the occupied territories, who certainly could use some help. For over thirty years they have been under Israel's tyranny--there is no other word for a government which holds (and generously exercises) the power of life and death over a population which has no voice whatever in that government. They are brutalized; they are malnourished; they are continually threatened by a settler movement resolved to take every inch of land from them. This bloody occupation is, according to many Israeli military men, of no strategic value, and it is clear that Israel would do much better to mind its own borders than to spread its forces all over the landscape in order to defend settler enclaves. So this is just plain tyranny, not self-defense, and Palestinian resistance is justified. If it is justified, so is Hizballah's attempt to support it.

In the second place, Hizballah fights to keep Israel out of Lebanon. That it sometimes initiates attacks on Israel in no way undermines this claim: sometimes the best defense is offense. And here too, the strategy certainly seems to incorporate humanitarian aims.

Hizballah came into existence as a response to Israel's earlier invasion of Lebanon, to a man-made humanitarian disaster in which tens of thousands of innocent lives were lost, and which features the atrocity of Sabra and Shatilla, described here by the organization Jewish Voice for Peace:

"From September 16 to 19 [1982], the Maronite Phalangist militia rampaged through Sabra and Shatilla. The camps were sealed off by Israeli soldiers who remained outside. Some later reported unease at the noises they heard, but no sound emanating from the camps could have betrayed the horror that was taking place inside them. When it was all over, the number of dead was estimated by Israel at between 700 and 800, the Lebanese government issued over 1,200 death certificates in the camps and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society put the death toll at over 2,000. Subsequent attempts at estimating the dead ranged from the Israeli figure to as many as 3,500. But in the end, the number is not what is most important. Even if it were the low figure, which seems unlikely, this would not diminish the horrifying nature of the atrocity. Thousands of men, women and children were killed, beaten, raped and tortured. The stories that emerged from survivors of Sabra and Shatilla were as chilling as those from any war or atrocity in history."

There is no proof but every reason to suspect that Israel's commander Ariel Sharon--and the much-admired Israeli intelligence services--knew very well what was happening. Certainly Israel had demonstrated, by its exuberant bombing of Lebanese civilians, that no decency would restrain it from such collusion.

So the Lebanese can reasonably expect Israel to invade when it likes, and to usher in a legion of atrocities: it is not as if Israel has subsequently found compassion or indeed anything else to restrain it in its treatment of 'Arabs'. The Lebanese army has again and again proven utterly incapable of defending the country. Only Hizballah has proven its ability to deal with the Israelis, and only by the sort of aggressive defence for which it is known. So here too, Hizballah fights on behalf of a helpless, threatened population; its insertion of military forces into South Lebanon can plausibly count as humanitarian intervention.

To some this may seem laughable. How can unprovoked attacks on a sovereign nation, one which made no obvious move to attack across its Northern border, count as humanitarian intervention? Whoever asks this is unfamiliar with the concept's wonderful elasticity. In terms of (how old-fashioned!) international law, humanitarian intervention is almost always aggressive and almost always contemptuous of sovereignty: it is not as if Afghanistan ever dreamed of attacking anyone, yet my Canadian newspaper is full of heart-warming stories about the fine young men and women who are travelling thousands of miles to kill as many inhumane Afghans as possible. In fact the lessons of Rwanda and Srebrenica, countlessly reiterated by large white people such as Michael Ignatieff, are that 'we're too fussy' about borders and sovereignty, too wimpy about shedding blood, too passive when we should be, not only aggressive, but pre-emptively so.

Now it may be true that Hizballah is also acting in its own interests and/or those of other countries seeking to extend their influence. Under the new rules of humanitarian intervention, as articulated by Ignatieff and others, that's just fine. Ignatieff mocks unmanly whiners who protest that America, in its humanitarian interventions, is following its own agenda--of course it is. Self-interest is part of what makes humanitarian intervention such great fun.

It may also be true that Hizballah's actions have led to a disaster for the Lebanese; perhaps for the Palestinians as well. (This may be the case even if it's odd to blame Hizballah for Israel's murderous excesses.) But failure doesn't seem to matter much for the humanitarian imperialist--only robotic ideologues would claim success for their humanitarian interventions in Afghanistan, Somalia or Rwanda. The response to failure is to 'stay the course', i.e., persist whatever the military and civilian losses, and Hizballah certainly seems ready to make just such a response.

Finally it must be stressed that, against humanitarian intervention, a country has absolutely no right of self-defense. Israel's correct response to the raid, according to this doctrine, would be to free the Palestinians and respect the sovereignty of its neighbors. A criminal has no active right of self-defense and neither, it seems, does a criminal state.

Not everyone would agree that Israel is indeed such a state, but according to the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, it doesn't take much to fit the bill. Thus Serbia became a criminal state because of (i) uncertain connections to poorly understood massacres outside its borders, and (ii) concerns about its treatment of civilians in Kosovo, part of its territory but claimed by some to be occupied. The parallel with Israel in Lebanon and the occupied territories is unmistakable. Indeed the case against Israel is quite as strong as against other stigmatized nations: human rights organizations have held Israel guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes; international jurists have added violations of international law and defiance of UN resolutions.

The doctrine of humanitarian intervention is certainly flawed and certainly dubious. It is well on the way, however, to becoming an international article of faith, and it rests on the fateful precedents set by idiotic American ideologues and their spineless European catamites. Properly interpreted, it may have some merit: few can applaud the caution of Western powers in Rwanda. This must be borne in mind when it is said that, after all, Israel has a right to defend itself.

---

(*) Every country contributing forces is predominantly 'white' except perhaps for Turkey, a country which aspires to join the paradigmatically white European community.

Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. Professor Neumann's views are not to be taken as those of his university. His book What's Left: Radical Politics and the Radical Psyche has just been republished by Broadview Press. He contributed the essay, "What is Anti-Semitism", to CounterPunch's book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. His latest book is The Case Against Israel. He can be reached at: mneumann@trentu.ca.

Here area few videos by Lebanese trapped in the war zone as well as some reposted corporate coverage

You woman in Beirut films bombing at night near her house

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bl0XT7H6TA0&search=Lebanon

Home video of bombing of S Lebanon:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=De2lCJJ36YU&search=Beirut

Escape from Lebanon: Video blog from French national trying to get out of Lebanon

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hU72G_iRPQw&search=Beirut

Mother and children separated by Israelis

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BOkNISOP43w&search=Lebanon

Slideshow and music: Lebanon...one more time!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QE4YNBi4BH4&search=Beirut

Images and music of current war

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RiaC44RsR5g&search=Lebanon

Images and music from current as past wars in Lebanon

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OUy15Zv-2ig&mode=related&search=Lebanon

Apocalypse in Lebanon TV clips mixed with video

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vkY4Q3jj-9M&search=Beirut

Images of how beutiful thinsg were before the bombings and then how things look now:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=taFpwRyMVlA&search=Beirut

Punk music and images and TV clips from current and past wars:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=m7CV5NoKPiI&search=Beirut

Driving Through Beirut before the current war

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zvzV5O-IT1s&search=Beirut

TV News Report: Tyre still under heavy bombardment

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wm-t7BdxPxA&search=South%20Lebanon

Kevin Sites - Israeli Terror Attack on Tyre - Aftermath

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5-j4rmu_X88&search=Tyre%20Lebanon

Ambulances are hit by Israeli forces

http://youtube.com/watch?v=p7wroSYRXJo&search=Tyre%20Lebanon

Middle east crisis Residents flee southern Lebanon

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cC8FtRymjRc&search=Tyre%20Lebanon

Kevin Sites - HotZone - More Israeli Murders

http://youtube.com/watch?v=joZpAvxDYZw&search=Tyre%20Lebanon

WTF are you talking about this time, psycho? Explain to me how adherents to your religion living in a place 2000 years ago gives you a LEGAL right to that place today. I'm all ears

research has shown that the Jews descend primarily from four of the 12 Israelite tribes

Yup, sure, uh-huh, but you totally slithered around my question, which was how does any of that give you a present-day "LEGAL" right to Israel? I'm still waiting here

Like this,"Sigh. Of course, SJ, if JA were to die, I'd pass out candy on the streets of Berkeley. (Although in his case, fruits and nuts might be more approrpriate)"

Hmmmm. Sound spretty angry.

When you are criticized or a poor behvaior is pointed out, rather than taking responsibility and saying, "I was wrong", it's always blame, blame, blame and point fingers at someone else to deflect from your own poor behavior. Kind of a microcosmic example of Israel's behavior.

Here's what you said

"Becky Johnson is a pure soul, and much more of a progressive than you'll ever be"

And here's Becky trying to slap whitewash over an IDF madman emptying the banana clip of an M-16 into an unarmed 13-year-old girl at point blank range

http://santacruz.indymedia.org/newswire/display/14929

Remember what I said about "morally deranged?" That would be the both of you. There is no lie so convoluted and sinister that you cannot twist your brains into believing it, just so long as it supports your fanatic beliefs

We weren't discussing Yid, anyway. Nice try. Divert, deflect , distract.

or a man who doesn't?

Rabid anti-Zionists don't want you to realize that a former Mossad employee, just like anyone else, can be a liar.

You mean *this* just wondering?

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/07/1698659.php

(snip)

just wondering

(snip)

Zionists love to sign other people's names. That's the kind of people they are, fundamentally dishonest. False flag ops are their specialty. We cannot help but wonder how many atrocities they have signed Osama bin Laden's name to, or Hamas' or the PLO's.

For more about "black propaganda," see:

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1555696_comment.php#1711536

RAbid anti-Zionists love to sign other people's names. That's the kind of people they are, fundamentally dishonest. False flag ops are their specialty. We cannot help but wonder how many atrocities they have signed Ehud Barak's name to, or Irgun's or the Haganah's.

For more about "black propaganda," see:

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1555696_comment.php#1711356

Once again they demonstrate what fundamentally dishonest people they are:



http://www.sfimc.net/news/2002/12/1555696_comment.php#1692248

(snip)

Sometimes they take something that an anti-Zionist has written, subtly alter its meaning by changing a few words, and post it under the name of the original author.

(snip)

Naw, s'okay. You can just go to your intel -- ahem, "ADL" -- pals for that. Gehrig can give you their toll-free hotline

So do you work in acquisitions or don't you?

Here's only the most recent notable case of a title you slimes have sought to suppress

http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/846527.html

So don't make believe this sort of thing doesn't go on. There's that last piss-soaked shred of cred you need to preserve, remember?

This is more like it:

http://www.foodnotbombs.net/adl_examiner.html