[spectre] Re: spectre] Save the Lebanese Civilians Petition

[Louise Desrenards]

On 19/07/06 7:14, "rene beekman" <r at raakvlak.net> probably wrote:

> at the risk of being accused of all kind of things - the most harmless
> ones being taking sides pro isreal or against the lebanese population -
> i do feel i have to say this

Do not worry; here we are to discuss;-)
> 
> From: Louise Desrenards
>> ATTENTION: considering the precedence of the shots of Hezbollah to
>> Haifa,
> [...]
>> Lebanese civilians have been under the constant attack of the state of
>> Israel for several days. The State of Israel, in disregard to
>> international
>> law and the Geneva Convention, is launching a maritime and air siege
>> targeting the entire population of the country. Innocent civilians are
>> being
>> collectively punished in Lebanon by the state of Israel in deliberate
>> acts
>> of terrorism as described in Article 33 of the Geneva Convention.
> 
> the predictability and easy with which west european intellectualism is
> capable to separate good from evil, and the absolute infallibility with
> which it is identifies victim and perpetrator never ceases to amaze me.

The petition is written by 'Lebanese intellectuals not by "west european
intellectuals". Consequently what you call "the well" (be right) cannot be
as the aggressor of the Lebanon.
> 
> true, hezbollah will never stop firing rockets at isreali villages and
> schools using the civilian population of neighboring sovereign
> countries as hostage and human shield because of some online petition.

Probably yes they will not if nobody ask them to do it. You have never seen
a foreigner waving to be understood for lack of being listened? It is enough
to be interested in it so that he(her) stops stirring...

> but if you're so much against war as such, a petition that identifies
> both hezbollah's and isreal's actions as the cause of the war would at
> least pretend to cover up any alternative political agenda's that those
> who drafted the petition might have had.

This petition declares that Lebanon is assaulted by the representative army
of Israel: I do not see where yourselves can see an alternative in this
declaration at the moment the representative army of Lebanon has not
assaulted Israel. It argues of laws in matter of offense by a state to
another state which are installed by the conventions of Geneva which was
respected even by US in Viet Nam or French in Algeria to the borders and the
countries of the borders where they were refugees helping the resistance.

Hezbollah is not the representative army of Lebanon. Obviously resistance
arms in the camps of refugee; I cannot imagine that you would be surprised?
Or you do not know of the history of independences from colonialisms... More
you misunderstand of the question of Palestinian territories statement since
Oslo. You forgot Rabin's inside murder, you forgot of Lewinski's affair and
you forgot so much more of the question of Israel to US power and from US
power to Israel and to otherness.

Remember Sabra and Chatila; Chatila yet now is a camp of Palestinian
refugees. 
http://www.thomascrown.com/Chatila.htm

Do you know what has happened at Jenin?
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1658.shtml

I have explained in my former email that the current war which is
permanently destroying the cities the campaigns and the life of Palestinians
in their own official territory is a cause they do not stay fin their own
country for a part of them (specially people from the campaigns when their
houses are destroyed they are obliged to leave. So when can they go but the
borders?

> rene
> 
Quote recent article by Uri Avnery, famous " journalist, peace activist,
former member of the Knesset, and leader of Gush Shalom"‹ regular
contributor for example to Media Monitors Network (MMN).

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/32645

The Real Aim
by Uri Avnery
(Saturday July 15 2006)

"The American policy is full of contradictions. President Bush wants "regime
change" in the Middle East, but the present Lebanese regime has only
recently been set up by under American pressure. In the meantime, Bush has
succeeded only in breaking up Iraq and causing a civil war (as foretold
here). He may get the same in Lebanon, if he does not stop the Israeli army
in time."

The real aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet
government.

That was the aim of Ariel Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It failed.
But Sharon and his pupils in the military and political leadership have
never really given up on it.

As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out
in full coordination with the US.

As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the
Lebanese elite.

That's the main thing. Everything else is noise and propaganda.

On the eve of the 1982 invasion, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told
Ariel Sharon that, before starting it, it was necessary to have a "clear
provocation", which would be accepted by the world.

The provocation indeed took place - exactly at the appropriate time - when
Abu-Nidal's terror gang tried to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in
London. This had no connection with Lebanon, and even less with the PLO (the
enemy of Abu-Nidal), but it served its purpose.

This time, the necessary provocation has been provided by the capture of the
two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah. Everyone knows that they cannot be freed
except through an exchange of prisoners. But the huge military campaign that
has been ready to go for months was sold to the Israeli and international
public as a rescue operation.

(Strangely enough, the very same thing happened two weeks earlier in the
Gaza Strip. Hamas and its partners captured a soldier, which provided the
excuse for a massive operation that had been prepared for a long time and
whose aim is to destroy the Palestinian government.)

The declared aim of the Lebanon operation is to push Hizbullah away from the
border, so as to make it impossible for them to capture more soldiers and to
launch rockets at Israeli towns. The invasion of the Gaza strip is also
officially aimed at getting Ashkelon and Sderot out of the range of the
Qassams.

That resembles the 1982 "Operation Peace for Gallilee". Then, the public and
the Knesset were told that the aim of the war was to "push the Katyushas 40
km away from the border".

That was a deliberate lie. For 11 months before the war, not a single
Katyusha rocket (nor a single shot) had been fired over the border. From the
beginning, the aim of the operation was to reach Beirut and install a
Quisling dictator. As I have recounted more than once, Sharon himself told
me so nine months before the war, and I duly published it at the time, with
his consent (but unattributed).

Of course, the present operation also has several secondary aims, which do
not include the freeing of the prisoners. Everybody understands that that
cannot be achieved by military means. But it is probably possible to destroy
some of the thousands of missiles that Hizbullah has accumulated over the
years. For this end, the army chiefs are ready to endanger the inhabitants
of the Israeli towns that are exposed to the rockets. They believe that that
is worthwhile, like an exchange of chess figures.

Another secondary aim is to rehabilitate the "deterrent power" of the army.
That is a codeword for the restoration of the army's injured pride that has
suffered a severe blow from the daring military actions of Hamas in the
south and Hizbullah in the north.

Officially, the Israeli government demands that the Government of Lebanon
disarm Hizbullah and remove it from the border region.

That is clearly impossible under the present Lebanese regime, a delicate
fabric of ethno-religious communities. The slightest shock can bring the
whole structure crashing down and throw the state into total anarchy -
especially after the Americans succeeded in driving out the Syrian army, the
only element that has for years provided some stability.

The idea of installing a Quisling in Lebanon is nothing new. In 1955, David
Ben-Gurion proposed taking a "Christian officer" and installing him as
dictator. Moshe Sharet showed that this idea was based on complete ignorance
of Lebanese affairs and torpedoed it. But 27 years later, Ariel Sharon tried
to put it into effect nevertheless. Bashir Gemayel was indeed installed as
president, only to be murdered soon afterwards. His brother, Amin, succeeded
him and signed a peace agreement with Israel, but was driven out of office.
(The same brother is now publicly supporting the Israeli operation.)

The calculation now is that if the Israeli Air Force rains heavy enough
blows on the Lebanese population - paralysing the sea- and airports,
destroying the infrastructure, bombarding residential neighborhoods, cutting
the Beirut-Damascus highroad etc. - the public will get furious with
Hizbullah and pressure the Lebanese government into fulfilling Israel's
demands. Since the present government cannot even dream of doing so, a
dictatorship will be set up with Israel's support.

That is the military logic. I have my doubts. It can be assumed that most
Lebanese will react as any other people on earth would: with fury and hatred
towards the invader. That happened in 1982, when the Shiites in the south of
Lebanon, until then as docile as a doormat, stood up against the Israeli
occupiers and created the Hizbullah, which has become the strongest force in
the country. If the Lebanese elite now becomes tainted as collaborators with
Israel, it will be swept off the map. (By the way, have the Qassams and
Katyushas caused the Israeli population to exert pressure on our government
to give up? Quite the contrary.)

The American policy is full of contradictions. President Bush wants "regime
change" in the Middle East, but the present Lebanese regime has only
recently been set up by under American pressure. In the meantime, Bush has
succeeded only in breaking up Iraq and causing a civil war (as foretold
here). He may get the same in Lebanon, if he does not stop the Israeli army
in time. Moreover, a devastating blow against Hizbullah may arouse fury not
only in Iran, but also among the Shiites in Iraq, on whose support all of
Bush's plans for a pro-American regime are built.

So what's the answer? Not by accident, Hizbullah has carried out its
soldier-snatching raid at a time when the Palestinians are crying out for
succor. The Palestinian cause is popular all over the Arab word. By showing
that they are a friend in need, when all other Arabs are failing dismally,
Hizbullah hopes to increase its popularity. If an Israeli-Palestinian
agreement had been achieved by now, Hizbullah would be no more than a local
Lebanese phenomenon, irrelevant to our situation.

Less than three months after its formation, the Olmert-Peretz government has
succeeded in plunging Israel into a two-front war, whose aims are
unrealistic and whose results cannot be foreseen.

If Olmert hopes to be seen as Mister Macho-Macho, a Sharon # 2, he will be
disappointed. The same goes for the desperate attempts of Peretz to be taken
seriously as an imposing Mister Security. Everybody understands that this
campaign - both in Gaza and in Lebanon - has been planned by the army and
dictated by the army. The man who makes the decisions in Israel now is Dan
Halutz. It is no accident that the job in Lebanon has been turned over to
the Air Force.

The public is not enthusiastic about the war. It is resigned to it, in stoic
fatalism, because it is being told that there is no alternative. And indeed,
who can be against it? Who does not want to liberate the "kidnapped
soldiers"? Who does not want to remove the Katyushas and rehabilitate
deterrence? No politician dares to criticize the operation (except the Arab
MKs, who are ignored by the Jewish public). In the media, the generals reign
supreme, and not only those in uniform. There is almost no former general
who is not being invited by the media to comment, explain and justify, all
speaking in one voice.

(As an illustration: Israel's most popular TV channel invited me to an
interview about the war, after hearing that I had taken part in an anti-war
demonstration. I was quite surprised. But not for long - an hour before the
broadcast, an apologetic talk-show host called and said that there had been
a terrible mistake - they really meant to invite Professor Shlomo Avineri, a
former Director General of the Foreign Office who can be counted on to
justify any act of the government, whatever it may be, in lofty academic
language.)

"Inter arma silent Musae" - when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent.
Or, rather: when the guns roar, the brain ceases to function.

And just a small thought: when the State of Israel was founded in the middle
of a cruel war, a poster was plastered on the walls: "All the country - a
front! All the people - an army!"

58 Years have passed, and the same slogan is still as valid as it was then.
What does that say about generations of statesmen and generals?


Source:

by courtesy & © 2006 Uri Avnery

/////////////////////

Quote: Tanya Reinhart " professor in Tel Aviv University and the author of
Israel/Palestine: How to End the 1948 War and "Détruire la Palestine"
(French)"‹ regular contributor to  Media Monitors Network (MMN).


http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/32533

What are they fighting for?


What are they fighting for
by Tanya Reinhart
(Thursday July 13 2006)

"Since ending the occupation is the one thing Israel is not willing to
consider, the option promoted by the army is breaking the Palestinians by
devastating brutal force. They should be starved, bombarded, terrorized with
sonic booms for months, until they understand that rebelling is futile, and
accepting prison life is their only hope for staying alive."

Whatever may be the fate of the captive soldier Gilad Shalit, the Israeli
army¹s war in Gaza is not about him. As senior security analyst Alex Fishman
widely reported, the army was preparing for an attack months earlier and was
constantly pushing for it, with the goal of destroying the Hamas
infrastructure and its government. The army initiated an escalation on 8
June when it assassinated Abu Samhadana, a senior appointee of the Hamas
government, and intensified its shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Governmental authorization for action on a larger scale was already given by
12 June, but it was postponed in the wake of the global reverberation caused
by the killing of civilians in the air force bombing the next day. The
abduction of the soldier released the safety-catch, and the operation began
on 28 June with the destruction of infrastructure in Gaza and the mass
detention of the Hamas leadership in the West Bank, which was also planned
weeks in advance. [1]

In Israeli discourse, Israel ended the occupation in Gaza when it evacuated
its settlers from the Strip, and the Palestinians¹ behavior therefore
constitutes ingratitude. But there is nothing further from reality than this
description. In fact, as was already stipulated in the Disengagement Plan,
Gaza remained under complete Israeli military control, operating from
outside. Israel prevented any possibility of economic independence for the
Strip and from the very beginning, Israel did not implement a single one of
the clauses of the agreement on border-crossings of November 2005. Israel
simply substituted the expensive occupation of Gaza with a cheap occupation,
one which in Israel¹s view exempts it from the occupier¹s responsibility to
maintain the Strip, and from concern for the welfare and the lives of its
million and a half residents, as determined in the fourth Geneva convention.

Israel does not need this piece of land, one of the most densely populated
in the world, and lacking any natural resources. The problem is that one
cannot let Gaza free, if one wants to keep the West Bank. A third of the
occupied Palestinians live in the Gaza strip. If they are given freedom,
they would become the center of Palestinian struggle for liberation, with
free access to the Western and Arab world. To control the West Bank, Israel
needs full control Gaza. The new form of control Israel has developed is
turning the whole of the Strip into a prison camp completely sealed from the
world.

Besieged occupied people with nothing to hope for, and no alternative means
of political struggle, will always seek ways to fight their oppressor. The
imprisoned Gaza Palestinians found a way to disturb the life of the Israelis
in the vicinity of the Strip, by launching home-made Qassam rockets across
the Gaza wall against Israeli towns bordering the Strip. These primitive
rockets lack the precision to focus on a target, and have rarely caused
Israeli casualties; they do however cause physical and psychological damage
and seriously disturb life in the targeted Israeli neighborhoods. In the
eyes of many Palestinians, the Qassams are a response to the war Israel has
declared on them. As a student from Gaza said to the New York Times, ³Why
should we be the only ones who live in fear? With these rockets, the
Israelis feel fear, too. We will have to live in peace together, or live in
fear together.² [2]

The mightiest army in the Middle East has no military answer to these
home-made rockets. One answer that presents itself is what Hamas has been
proposing all along, and Haniyeh repeated this week - a comprehensive
cease-fire. Hamas has proven already that it can keep its word. In the 17
months since it announced its decision to abandon armed struggle in favor of
political struggle, and declared a unilateral cease-fire (³tahdiya² - calm),
it did not participate in the launching of Qassams, except under severe
Israeli provocation, as happened in the June escalation. However, Hamas
remains committed to political struggle against the occupation of Gaza and
the West Bank. In Israel's view, the Palestinians elections results is a
disaster, because for the first time they have a leadership that insists on
representing Palestinian interests rather than just collaborating with
Israel's demands.

Since ending the occupation is the one thing Israel is not willing to
consider, the option promoted by the army is breaking the Palestinians by
devastating brutal force. They should be starved, bombarded, terrorized with
sonic booms for months, until they understand that rebelling is futile, and
accepting prison life is their only hope for staying alive. Their elected
political system, institutions and police should be destroyed. In Israel's
vision, Gaza should be ruled by gangs collaborating with the prison wards.

The Israeli army is hungry for war. It would not let concerns for captive
soldiers stand in its way. Since 2002 the army has argued that an
³operation² along the lines of ³Defensive Shield² in Jenin was also
necessary in Gaza. Exactly a year ago, on 15 July (before the
Disengagement), the army concentrated forces on the border of the Strip for
an offensive of this scale on Gaza. But then the USA imposed a veto. Rice
arrived for an emergency visit that was described as acrimonious and stormy,
and the army was forced to back down.[3] Now, the time has finally came.
With the Islamophobia of the American Administration at a high point, it
appears that the USA is prepared to authorize such an operation, on
condition that it not provoke a global outcry with excessively-reported
attacks on civilians.[4]

With the green light for the offensive given, the army's only concern is
public image. Fishman reported this Tuesday that the army is worried that
"what threatens to burry this huge military and diplomatic effort" is
reports of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Hence, the army would take care
to let some food into Gaza. (5) From this perspective, it is necessary to
feed the Palestinians in Gaza so that it would be possible to continue to
kill them undisturbed.

Notes:

[1]. Alex Fishman, Who is for the elimination of Hamas, Yediot Aharonot
Saturday Supplement, June 30, 2006. See also Alex Fishman, The safety-catch
released, Yediot Aharonot June 21, 2006 (Hebrew), Aluf Benn, An operation
with two goals, Ha'aretz, June 29 2006.

[2]. Greg Myre, Rockets Create a 'Balance of Fear' With Israel, Gaza
Residents Say. The New York Times, July 9, 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/world/
middleeast/09rockets.html?ex=1310097

[3]. Steven Erlanger, ³U.S. Presses Israel to Smooth the Path to a
Palestinian Gaza², New York Times, August 7 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/
international/middleeast/07israel.html? ex=1281067200&en=82f12ac7eed5ee24&ei
=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss The planned July 2005 offensive is documented
in detail in my The Road Map to Nowhere - Israel Palestine since 2003,
Verso, September 2006.

[4]. For a detailed survey of the U.S. administration's present stands, see
Ori Nir, U.S. Seen Backing Israeli Moves To Topple Hamas, The Forward, July
7, 2006. http://www.forward.com/articles/8063

[5]. Alex Fishman, Their food is finished, Yediot Aharonot, July 11, 2006.

----------------------------------------------

* A shorter version of this article was scheduled to appear Thursday, July
13 in Yediot Aharonot, but postponed to next week because of the
developments in Southern Lebanon. Parts of this article were translated from
Hebrew by Mark Marshall.


Source:

by courtesy & © 2006 Tanya Reinhart

/////////

They are two informed voices of Israel/ from Israel.

Please concerning ask Israel make the peace let us stop with ideology of
legitimate self defense that could be whatever madness from the individual
to the state. 

If we respect your arguments, it is to say that since somebody feels
threatened he has the right to kill and to war. It is a pretext of realizing
civil war. I do not find that your reasoning is a democratic nor a
republican responsible reasoning. And I am very worried that my own regions
are inhabited by such "natural" conceptions in matter of security of the
persons subjectively convinced of their right to act. I am very worried that
my own regions are inhabited by such "natural" conceptions in security of
the persons - and states‹ on 2006.

The preventive war, you know what it makes, you know what it hides? You know
how it toughens the opponent in the most narrow and most murderous
conception of its representation for a permanent resistance which will never
stop at the moment the war does not stop being the current representative
society?

Thus the war about any otherness ( other selves ) which demonstrates because
not heard, and the infinite war in prevention of the threats to come? As
told it Susan Sontag in his last text in New York Times (i quote it in the
next email because it would be to much for one all)...

L.