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The Cruel, Collective Punishment of Lebanon

by GIDEON LEVY Tuesday, Aug. 01, 2006 at 9:39 PM

Lebanon, which has never fought Israel and has 40 daily newspapers, 42 colleges and universities and hundreds of different banks, is being destroyed by our planes and cannon and nobody is taking into account the amount of hatred we are sowing. In international public opinion, Israel has been turned into a monster, and that still hasn't been calculated into the debit column of this war. Israel is badly stained, a moral stain that can't be easily and quickly removed. And only we don't want to see it.

The Cruel, Collective Punishment of Lebanon

Days of Darkness

By GIDEON LEVY

Israel is sinking into a strident, nationalistic atmosphere and darkness is beginning to cover everything. The brakes we still had are eroding, the insensitivity and blindness that characterized Israeli society in recent years is intensifying. The home front is cut in half: the north suffers and the center is serene. But both have been taken over by tones of jingoism, ruthlessness and vengeance, and the voices of extremism that previously characterized the camp's margins are now expressing its heart. The left has once again lost its way, wrapped in silence or "admitting mistakes." Israel is exposing a unified, nationalistic face.

The devastation we are sowing in Lebanon doesn't touch anyone here and most of it is not even shown to Israelis. Those who want to know what Tyre looks like now have to turn to foreign channels--the BBC reporter brings chilling images from there, the likes of which won't be seen here. How can one not be shocked by the suffering of the other, at our hands, even when our north suffers? The death we are sowing at the same time, right now in Gaza, with close to 120 dead since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, 27 last Wednesday alone, touches us even less. The hospitals in Gaza are full of burned children, but who cares? The darkness of the war in the north covers them, too.

Since we've grown accustomed to thinking collective punishment a legitimate weapon, it is no wonder no debate has sparked here over the cruel punishment of Lebanon for Hezbollah's actions. If it was okay in Nablus, why not Beirut? The only criticism being heard about this war is over tactics. Everyone is a general now and they are mostly pushing the IDF to deepen its activities. Commentators, ex-generals and politicians compete at raising the stakes with extreme proposals.

Haim Ramon "doesn't understand" why there is still electricity in Baalbek; Eli Yishai proposes turning south Lebanon into a "sandbox"; Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, proposes an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses and the next day to conduct a parade of prisoners in their underwear, "to strengthen the home front's morale."

It's not difficult to guess what we would think about an Arab TV station whose commentators would say something like that, but another few casualties or failures by the IDF, and Limor's proposal will be implemented. Is there any better sign of how we have lost our senses and our humanity?

Chauvinism and an appetite for vengeance are raising their heads. If two weeks ago only lunatics such as Safed Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu spoke about "wiping out every village where a Katyusha is fired," now a senior officer in the IDF speaks that way in Yedioth Aharonoth's main headlines. Lebanese villages may not have been wiped out yet, but we have long since wiped out our own red lines.

A bereaved father, Haim Avraham, whose son was kidnapped and killed by Hezbollah in October 2000, fires an artillery shell into Lebanon for the reporters. It's vengeance for his son. His image, embracing the decorated artillery shell is one of the most disgraceful images of this war. And it's only the first. A group of young girls also have their picture taken decorating IDF shells with slogans.

Maariv, which has turned into the Fox News of Israel, fills its pages with chauvinist slogans reminiscent of particularly inferior propaganda machines, such as "Israel is strong"--which is indicative of weakness, actually--while a TV commentator calls for the bombing of a TV station.

Lebanon, which has never fought Israel and has 40 daily newspapers, 42 colleges and universities and hundreds of different banks, is being destroyed by our planes and cannon and nobody is taking into account the amount of hatred we are sowing. In international public opinion, Israel has been turned into a monster, and that still hasn't been calculated into the debit column of this war. Israel is badly stained, a moral stain that can't be easily and quickly removed. And only we don't want to see it.

The people want victory, and nobody knows what that is and what its price will be.

The Zionist left has also been made irrelevant. As in every difficult test in the past--the two intifadas for example--this time too the left has failed just when its voice was so necessary as a counterweight to the stridency of the beating tom-toms of war. Why have a left if at every real test it joins the national chorus?

Peace Now stands silently, so does Meretz, except for brave Zehava Gal-On. A few days of a war of choice and already Yehoshua Sobol is admitting he was wrong all along. Peace Now is suddenly an "infantile slogan" for him. His colleagues are silent and their silence is no less resounding. Only the extreme left makes its voice heard, but it is a voice nobody listens to.

Long before this war is decided, it can already be stated that its spiraling cost will include the moral blackout that is surrounding and covering us all, threatening our existence and image no less than Hezbollah's Katyushas.

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The War Crime Machine: Defeating the IDF

by LIAQUAT ALI KHAN Tuesday, Aug. 01, 2006 at 9:40 PM

The War Crime Machine

Defeating the IDF

By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN

Defeating the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is emerging as a credible possibility. For decades, the IDF's invincibility has haunted Arab governments, their armed forces, and resistance groups in general. The invincibility doctrine has also demoralized the Muslim world, forcing them to accept Israel's military excesses, including the inhumane treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories, as fait accompli. The current war in Lebanon, though brutal for civilians, is in the process of shattering the IDF's real and imagined invincibility. The IDF's perceived vulnerability would in the future invite pestering and relentless guerilla warfare against Israel's territorial integrity. Even friendly Muslim governments, such as Jordan and Egypt, would be less willing to fully cooperate with Israel in supporting the war on terror. These groups would form a new "coalition of the willing" to engage the IDF. Already, Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda have joined their rhetoric to fight the IDF in unison

The war with Hezbollah is exposing the IDF's distinct weaknesses that undermine its status as an unconquerable military. The IDF is failing in its intelligence, targets, tactics, and strategies. The proof of the failure is in the indiscriminate destruction scattered on the ground. The crime scene, as they say, tells the story. Since the IDF is well-connected with the United States, its military supplies are unlikely to dwindle in the near future. In the Lebanon war, however, the IDF has destroyed dozens of buildings and killed hundreds of civilians but achieved nothing of strategic importance. The Hezbollah rockets continue to fall on Haifa. The IDF seems helpless to stop them.

The Hezbollah resistance has shown that the IDF can be engaged in a protracted no-win warfare, and real damage can be inflicted on its soldiers and hardware, including its sophisticated ships. The IDF appears to have been designed for sprint wars, and not for marathon wars. Hezbollah's determined guerillas with no tanks, aircrafts, navy ships, guided armaments, or surveillance satellites have bamboozled the IDF's well armed troops, supposedly the best in the world. A similar guerilla force in Iraq, which refuses to go away, reinforces the guerilla determination to fight hard. Gone is the thesis that well-equipped armed forces can defeat "terrorist cells" only if more force is used more frequently and more brutally.

The Hezbollah initiative, even if it is flattened in due time, would encourage the proliferation of other guerilla groups in the region to engage the IDF at other points on the long and seamless Israeli-Arab border. At the present time, no guerilla groups have surfaced in Jordan, Egypt, and Syria ready to engage the IDF across the border. This will change, as new groups draw enraged inspiration from the cages of Palestine and the ruins of Lebanon. And if Iran or Syria is attacked, the guerilla movement would find its quickening impetus. The suppressive measures that Arab national armies have so far imposed on guerilla groups would be removed since the public opinion, the so-called Arab street, would not allow national armies to crush homegrown groups challenging the IDF. The ambiguous but strategically lethal entente between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government would be writ large in the entire Middle East. It would serve as the future model for engaging the IDF.

This model would take roots because almost all Muslim countries in the neighborhood and even beyond share a secret desire to weaken the IDF. They were not sure if that could be done. In the past decades, the IDF has defeated the combined armed forces of several Arab states in matter of days. Outstanding Israeli occupations serve as reminders of the IDF's iron hand. Gaza and the West Bank are perpetually under the IDF boots. Syria cannot retrieve the Golan Heights from the IDF, and Lebanon is helpless to undo the IDF occupation of the Sheeba Farms. The IDF demolished Iraq's nuclear power generator like a sitting duck. Per Dick Cheney, the IDF might incinerate Iran's nuclear facilities as well. Even Jordan and Egypt, which have no territorial claims against Israel, have little reason to root for the IDF. For these disgruntled nations, the Hezbollah has furnished an opening of possibilities, including the possibility of defeating the IDF.

The IDF knows that the stakes are high. That is why Israel has persuaded the US to block any attempts to halt fighting for a while. Ironically, however, even the Hezbollah is in no rush to beg for a ceasefire, since a long war benefits guerillas and not the IDF. In quick punches, the IDF plans on annihilating the Hezbollah. It wants to do in Lebanon what the US forces could not do Iraq. The IDF wants a big victory. The annihilation of Hezbollah must be so visible, believes the IDF, that the entire world could see the fate of "terrorists." If the war continues, the IDF is likely to intensify its bombardment and the attendant destruction in both Gaza and Lebanon. If the war stops, the emboldened Hezbollah would become even stronger in the years to come.

Meanwhile, the IDF's strategy of total incineration of "terrorists" is creating public outcry throughout the world. For years, commentators, journalists, lawyers, and politicians have advanced the argument that terrorists are morally worthless because they kill innocent civilians. On the basis of this argument, a universal call is made to wipe out all terrorists. This argument is now pointing toward the IDF. The merciless killings of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, the extensive annihilation of utility plants, apartment buildings, roads, and the bombardment of stand alone UN posts, all these reckless and confused military undertakings have forced the viewers across the world to draw parallels between terrorists and the IDF. Even the label of anti-Semitism has not prevented UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egland, who has previously served as the Secretary General of the Norwegian Red Cross, from saying that the IDF is violating the laws of war, i.e., the IDF has committed war crimes.

Ali Khan is a professor of law at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas. He can be reached at: ali.khan@washburn.edu.

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OLMERT THE BUSH OIL NAZI ON COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT

by OLMERT THE BUSH OIL NAZI Wednesday, Aug. 02, 2006 at 4:35 AM

OLMERT THE BUSH OIL NAZI: "Sorry to Oil the Razing of Lebanon and the Intentional Targeting of Lebanese Civilians by IDF IAF Nazis / Likud Terrorist / Irgun Zvai Leumi Thugs but Oil comes First. Fill her UP ???????"

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