Alternative Insight

Massacre in the Levant
Disregarding Truth and Ignoring Consequences



Two ceasefires are required for the present Israel/Lebanese strife. One ceasefire will stop the massacres of the Lebanese and Palestinian people and the killings of Israeli populations. The other ceasefire will halt hostilities that resulted from Hezbollah's unjustified incursion into Israeli territory and its abduction and killing of Israeli soldiers. Failure of the international community to implement and force the first ceasefire, due to the intransigence of President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, disregards the truth of the conflict and ignores its consequences. In a world of law and order, massacres don't follow from border skirmishes. This is not a war. This is a massacre. Carried to its final conclusion, destruction of the Levant and great damage to Israel are predicted.

From Skirmish to Massacre
The chronology of events indicates that the Israeli military (IDF) became frustrated in its attempt to retrieve the abducted soldiers and leaped beyond war to massacre.

Hezbollah militants crossed into Israel, abducted two Israeli soldiers and killed three others while firing two harmless rockets close to Shlomi, an Israeli town close to the border and about 15 km east of the Mediterranean coast. After refusing to negotiate a prisoner exchange, an Israeli tank crew entered Lebanese territory to locate the prisoners. Hezbollah gunners destroyed one Israeli tank and caused an additional five deaths to the IDF. Without seeking international support to free its abducted soldiers, Israel immediately blockaded Lebanon, bombed several targets, including Beirut's airport and Hezbollah's headquarters in southern Beirut. After these attacks, Hezbollah fired its rockets to Haifa.

Hezbollah started an unjustified skirmish. However, Israel, after learning it could not use a ground campaign to retrieve its soldiers, escalated hostilities that could of and should of been contained and started a war that quickly became a massacre. Its initial strategy emulates NATO's war against Yugoslavia, the use of aerial warfare to pulverize an enemy that has no means of defense against guided missiles launched from airplanes whose bases are out of reach. No need to use troops and no need to occupy terrain. Two differences to the Yugoslavia campaign; Hezbollah responded with unguided rockets within reach, and the battle against the Lebanese unfolded rapidlyly. A rapid escalation, unlike a slow escalation, does not allow the foe to gauge the punishment and find a way to meet demands without total surrender. Despite the minimal damage to Israel by the initial Hezbollah rockets, Israel attacked ferociously and did not permit any response but surrender. Knowing Hezbollah won't surrender allows a path to complete destruction. Hezbollah started a low-level conflict and Israel propelled a skirmish into a cataclysm.

Israel's one-sided military actions against the Palestinians in Gaza and its crushing approach to incorporate all of Jerusalem into its state undoubtedly motivated Hezbollah in its actions. Israel's response to the capture of one of its soldiers across the border from Gaza should have informed Hezbollah it would receive a similar response. Hezbollah is guilty of a rash action that did not consider it lacked proper defense against a violent Israeli attack. Nevertheless, Hezbollah's inexcusable error is now only a footnote to more disturbing events.

The Hand of History
Both the United States and Israel have replaced foreign policies with military actions to resolve their own self-created problems.
Their military actions lead to other military actions and the self-created problems are never resolved.

The U.S. has decades of repeated incursions of Latin American nations. Belligerent action in Vietnam failed to achieve goals, whatever they were. Belligerent action in Iraq seems doomed to failure, although success is undefined. How many times will Fallujah be liberated? Israel has constantly warred with its neighboring nations - entering Lebanon with brute force on several occasions. The first invasion created Hezbollah while the others did nothing but create other wars. Now, Israel by its actions and the United States by defending Israel's actions and by the words of its leaders indicate they are embarking on a course of that will resolve their difficulties in the Middle East; whatever they are.

President Bush has said, "
[he} has found opportunity for a broader solution to the conflict in the Mid- East."
Secretary of State Rice, who lives in North America, has expounded. "
It is time for a new Middle East."

President Bush might not comprehend what he has been told to say. It's difficult to understand if Secretary Rice actually believes what she is saying. Nevertheless, their statements are revelations - they indicate a conspiracy between the U.S. and Israel to take advantage of Hezbollah's seizure of two soldiers and reprogram the Middle East in accord with U.S. and Israel interests, regardless of the loss of life.

NYT, July 25, 2006
Divisions In Beirut, an Abyss Between Elegance and Chaos
By SABRINA TAVERNIS


BEIRUT, Lebanon, July 24 — The Paul Restaurant is still serving elegant lunches of prosciutto and chèvre. At the Printania, an elegant hotel on a hill east of the capital, stylish guests sip Arabic coffee near a glass display case of éclairs and chilled chocolate mousse.

Some miles away, in the southern suburbs, the destruction from Israeli airstrikes is more earthquake than war zone. Streets have entirely disappeared. Rubble from bombed buildings in some areas is piled several stories high. City blocks, or what is left of them, are ghostly.

In the days since Israeli planes began to bomb Lebanon, this seaside capital has been almost physically split in two, with its largely Shiite flank mutilated by Israeli airstrikes and most of the rest of the city remaining relatively unscathed, if quieter and emptier than usual.

Hezbollah is shelling Israel, but there is a difference between Hezbollah's and Israel's actions. Hezbollah's rockets that are hitting northern Israel, mainly Haifa, have caused limited damage. These are not guided missiles, don't pack more than two hundred pounds of explosives, and many land in fields and in areas where they do no harm. The number of Israeli civilians killed by a total fire of 1000 rockets are less than one or two large suicide bombings and the wounded are mainly from shrapnel or "shock." Material damage is negligible and easily repaired. The rockets are only another terror tactic, in which suicide bombers are replaced by aerial bombs - a desperate response to Israel's offensive tactics

On the other hand, Israel's guided missiles pack 500-2000 pounds of explosives, are well directed to targets and reduce a city block to dust. Israel fires hundreds of these missiles daily into the Lebanon heartland.

The massacre in Lebanon is a chilling reminder of the past.
Specifying the Shia population as the enemy and the selective bombings of Shia villages and their Beirut neighborhoods recall the selective razing of the Warsaw ghetto by the Nazis in World War Two. This is not an exaggeration. If persons will wipe the fog from their eyes and take action to prevent the tragedies they will save having to wipe the tears from their eyes after seeing the horrendous results. It isn't only the loss of life, it's the loss of daily activities, the loss of possessions, of comforts, of memories, of sanity. It's an immense psychological damage. How can devastated people eat, drink and sleep? Democracy allows the weak to seek redress against the powerful. Even if they don't succeed, the less powerful release their frustration by knowing they were able to try and can try again another day. Democracy does not prevail in international relations. The oppressed have no recourse to appeal and are left with seething frustration that destroys their psyche. The destruction in the Middle East has occurred in parallel with Israel's growth.

Israel's growth resembles the initial stages of the creation of the United States. In both cases settlers arrived from foreign shores, encountered indigenous peoples, expanded at the expense of the native people and increased their populations from immigration. Both nations systematically warred against the native peoples, at first slowly defending themselves, and later, after achieving superior power, provoked arguments to recklessly decimate the native people and silence antagonists.

A severe racism allows the transition from dispute to eradication. From the shores of the Mediterranean Sea through the lands of the Tigris River and on to the Caspian Sea, the U.S. and Israel intend to entirely subdue the Shia populations, a final solution to their problem with Middle East history. Bush, Rice and Olmert, the new unholy trinity, refuse to learn from past history.

Secretary Rice says that Hezbollah and Hamas are the root of the problem (which problem?) If they are responsible, and since Israel helped in the creation of Hezbollah and Hamas, isn't Israel also responsible? Other contradictions:
Hezbollah and Hamas did not exist before the problems started.
The U.S. and Israel appealed to the UN to remove Syrian influence from Lebanon. They succeeded in the endeavor and after Syria has left, Israel wars with Lebanon and the U.S. requests Syria to use its influence to stop Hezbollah.
Also, the U.S. and Israel have battled against and defeated secular Arab governments while the U.S. has supported states where Radical Islam flourishes, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Israel has been through this before.

In 1982, Israel said the same thing about eliminating PLO sanctuaries in Lebanon. It was after that 1982 Israeli invasion that Hezbollah was born. I remember Israeli national security experts even taking credit for fostering Hamas and Islamic fundamentalism as safe, reclusive alternatives to Palestinian secular nationalism. I remember watching Israeli soldiers blow up Palestinian houses and carry out collective punishment because, they told me matter-of-factly, punishment is the only language that Arabs understand. Israelis are inflicting collective punishment on Lebanese civilians for the same reason today.
Tom Hayden, Things Come 'Round in Mideast

Bush, Rice and Olmert, the new unholy trinity are set to direct the world to awful consequences.

The Awful Consequences
Whatever the reasons, and some might be justified, no nation can be allowed to devastate others as Israel has devastated the peoples of the Levant. Israel has suffered casualties since 1948, but they are small compared to the deaths, injuries, loss of lands, possessions and livelihoods that the Palestinians and Lebanese have suffered. The hostilities don't end but continue with new vigor and will undoubtedly continue until either Israel is subdued, an unlikely proposition, or Israel stifles all opposition. The latter result means the demise of a large percentage of the Arab population and the destruction of part of the Arab world.

Israel's use of overwhelming power in taking a skirmish to a massacre must frighten other nations into believing that a minor hostility can lead to a brutal reprisal from a powerful nation. More nations will be seeking weapons of mass destruction to defend themselves. The arms race will gather speed. And with the arms race, there will be new realignments, pacts for protection, pacts for subjugation. The world will return to 1914 and to treaties that trigger engagements and gather nations into the wars.

Hatred has been intensified, between Middle East and Western peoples, between Moslems and Jews. And with intensive hatred, terrorism could be come uncontrollable. It will become uncontrollable.

Speak of the abduction of two Israeli soldiers, the killing of three other Israeli soldiers and the resulting killing of Lebanese and Israelis, and the talk describes war and massacre. Speak of the abduction of two human beings and the killing of three others leading to the mass killings of several hundred human beings and destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives and the catastrophe in seen in its true perspective - national interests prevailing over human life. Ask the impossible and get the inconceivable - the total destruction of nations and their peoples. Where else can the massacre in the Levant end for the Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli peoples? Is Israel seeking a military solution or is Israel seeking a final solution?

alternativeinsight
august, 2006

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