(cross posted at montanamaven.com) In an article entitled "The Wrong Man for the Job", the former Iraq weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, lays out his reasons for why Richard Holbrooke is a bad choice for U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://www.truthdig.com/report...
"There will be no peace without a negotiated settlement that includes the Taliban. To accomplish this, leadership is required which recognizes the Taliban as a force of moderation, and not extremism. Holbrooke does not have a record which indicates he would be willing to consider direct negotiations with the Taliban. He tends to seek military solutions to difficult ethnic-based problems, and he is likely to argue for the deployment of even more U.S. troops to that war-ravaged nation. That would be a historic mistake."
"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return."
W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"
Versailles is full of almost nothing but fools. And those who are not fools are forced to spend almost all their time responding to fools. So what would it be like if, instead of wall-to-wall fools chattering endlessly about the Mideast on one channel after another, we instead had an intelligence discourse to guide us? Well, we don't have the TV network infrastructure--at least not here in the US. But we do have the content available, and potential content-providers out the wazoo. To pick up on one channel, in particular, one need only look to the London Review of Books, which has a page, "LRB contributors react to events in Gaza", first put up on January 15, which it has continued to update.
This is page where one can read the views of historians and historically-informed commentators who know that history is always at least a double fabrication--fabricated first by those who act in its midst, and fabricated again by those who pick and chose how the initial fabrication is made sense of, which pieces are kept and which discarded, which kept together, which separated, which disappeared, and which created out of nothing.
Here, to entice you, are a few excerpts of a few contributions, to give you a flavor of what it might be to watch an intelligent discussion on tv for a change. The excerpts are not intended to represent the full views of those quoted, only to reflect some of the kinds of ideas, insights and perspectives they put into play.
"Everything has got to come in; that is one of the things we will be insisting on strongly." -- John Holmes, UN humanitarian chief
The way to de facto peace between Israel and Hamas is obvious: end Israel's blockade on civilian goods and people going into and out of Gaza. Anyone who cares about peace, the security of Israel, and the security and welfare of Gaza should be pushing Israel - or the U.S., Israel's main and essential supporter - to lift its siege. Pushing hard, like the UN, CARE, and Save the Children did today and yesterday.
AFP: The United Nations urged Israel on Thursday to reopen Gaza crossings as senior officials assessed war damage . . .
"If you want to have reconstruction, you have to have cement and construction materials and pipes and spare parts," said UN humanitarian chief John Holmes at a UN-run school hit by an Israeli missile in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
"Everything has got to come in; that is one of the things we will be insisting on strongly" in discussions with Israel, said Holmes who was touring Gaza along with UN Middle East envoy Robert Serry.
Gaza's 1.5 million residents are struggling to cope without electricity and other basic necessities on the fourth day of an Israeli blockade. Hospitals have begun to run short of fuel for generators, and sewage has spilled out onto the streets. Jacky Rowland reports.
Here's the background to Israel's deadly siege. . .
. . . for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you. . . .
Aftermath of Tel Aviv suicide bombing attack.
Gaza, mother and injured child.
. . . because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve. . . .
Child injured in Israeli attacks. Hospital officials say she suffered white phosphorus burns. 1-19-09
Deutsche Welle: In Gaza City, residents continued sifting through the rubble left behind by Israeli air raids and heavy shelling, and rescue teams found at least 10 more bodies. At least 100 bodies were uncovered on Sunday, Gaza emergency chief Mo'aweya Hassanein told reporters.
A boy in Jebaliya. 1-19-09
They brought the Palestinian death toll in the Israeli offensive to at least 1,310, 514 of them women and minors. The actual civilian toll was likely higher, as health officials were unable to say how many of the adult men were fighters.
Ayat cries for her uncle, who was found dead in the rubble. 1-19-09
More than 5,500 people were injured, 2,650 of them women and children. Some 100,000 Gazans are said to have fled their homes.
Boy asleep on a donkey cart, 1-19-09
Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were also killed and dozens injured in the ground fighting and in rocket attacks.
More photos, information, analysis, and a place to give below, in this 'final' Gaza invasion diary.
"Terrorism" is probably the single most elastic and easily manipulated term in our political lexicon. Who the perpetrators and victims are of "terrorism" is almost always a function of who is wielding the term rather than some objective assessment.
Therefore, we are told that Hamas is a "terrorist" organization, and the Arabs in Gaza accuse Israel of Zionist "Terrorism."
Reuters: Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in the campaign. . . .
Israeli forces have killed some 1,138 people and wounded 5,100 during the Gaza war, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.
The Gaza/Israel and Palestine/Israel conflict is very long, very complex, and there are outrageous wrongs constantly being done by and to both sides. The game where we argue (usually by highlighting the negative facts about the 'bad guys') over and try to establish which side is (much) more to blame and then side with the other side is NOT part of a solution strategy. The immediate crisis, the Israeli invasion of Gaza, for example, does not require long and detailed arguments and a hammering out of the truth on all the points of contention and all the history that has gone on between Israel and Palestinians over the last century or so.
No, a solution -- at least a long-term 'temporary' solution -- to the Gaza crisis is exceptionally simple: do not allow military imports but otherwise end the killing siege on Gaza, in exchange for Hamas once again instituting a ceasefire on its own (feeble, mostly harmless) rocket attacks on Israel and doing its best to stop other groups' (feeble, mostly harmless) rocket attacks. Hamas is already willing to do such a deal. The hold up is that Israel (with the avid, vital, slavish support of the U.S.) wants to reinstitute the killing siege. (I say killing siege because through denial of medical supplies and care, denial of sanitation/sewage and water system repairs, and denial of food and water, the siege placed on Gaza has killed many Gaza civilians, a great many of them children.) The article below describes the Hamas ceasefire proposal as I have; they won't give in on an end to the siege.
(More below: machinations behind competing ceasefire proposals, a Jewish UK legislator says the Israelis act like Nazis, why Congress backs Israel, and Norman Finkelstein's insights on the whys of Israel's invasion.)
Reuters: The Palestinian death toll from the air-and-ground offensive has risen to at least 1,073 and there were more than 5,000 wounded, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. A Palestinian rights group said at least 670 of the dead were civilians.
Thirteen Israelis have been killed -- 10 soldiers and three civilians hit by Hamas rocket fire since Israel launched on December 27 a military campaign it said was aimed at ending such salvoes.
CNN (warehoused version; original CNN has been modified): Israeli forces moved into Gaza City overnight. During the clash with Hamas fighters, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency headquarters complex -- located in a densely populated neighborhood -- was hit repeatedly by shrapnel and artillery.
Israel's war fantasy of destroying Hamas is having quite the opposite effect--undermining its secular rival, instead, according to a NYTnews analysis:
"War on Hamas Saps Palestinian Leaders"
By ISABEL KERSHNER
JERUSALEM - Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.
But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza - indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters.
The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas's support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians.
"The Palestinian Authority is one of the main losers in this war," said Ghassan Khatib, an independent Palestinian analyst in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "How can it make gains in a war in which it is one of the casualties?"
....
Ever since Hamas began its one-party rule of Gaza, in the summer of 2007, Israel and the West have tried to turn Gazans against Hamas through an economic embargo and diplomatic isolation. While there is certainly anger at Hamas among Gazans, it pales beside the anger at Israel, the West and what some see as Fatah's collusion with those enemies.
The only thing surprising about this is that the Times is publishing this analysis right in the midst of the carnage--an indication, perhaps, that the failure of Israeli policy is becoming undeniable. Of course, it's not just counter-productive for Israel, as bin Laden has issued a renewed call for Holy War.
Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at Oxford University who served in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s. He is the author of numerous books, most notably The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. His latest book is Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace. Avi Shlaim is widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In the interview, Shlaim refuted a number of key lies that are fundamental to the US/Israeli propaganda line. These lies include:
(1) The conflation of Israel's post-1967 imperialist occupation of Palestinian lands with Israel's pre-1967 defensive posture. Shlaim explains that 1967 was decisive turning point, as a logic of occupation took over that continues to this day. He defends Israel's actions and positions up to 1967, while rejecting them thereafter.
(2) The misrepresentation of Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza as part of an Israeli peace effort. Shlaim explains them as a strategic shift to continue Israeli imperialist occupation more efficiently and effectively, in light of increased opposition.
(3) The lie that the Gaza ceasefire did not protect Israel. Shlaim explains how the ceasefire reduced the incidence of homemade Kassam rockets from 179 per month to just "three rockets a month, almost zero." Thus, "if Israel wanted to protect its citizens-and it had every right to protect its citizens-the way to go about it was not by launching this vicious military offensive, but by observing the ceasefire."
(4) The lie that Hamas broke the cease-fire. "It was broken not by Hamas, but by the IDF. It was broken by the IDF on the 4th of November, when it launched a raid into Gaza and killed six Hamas men."
(5) The lie that Isreali had observed and supported the cease-fire. "One of the terms of the ceasefire was that Israel would lift the blockade of Gaza, yet Israel failed to lift the blockade, and that is one issue that is also overlooked or ignored by official Israeli spokesmen. So Israel was doubly guilty of sabotaging the ceasefire, A, by launching a military attack, and B, by maintaining its very cruel siege of the people of Gaza."
Earlier today, Chris wrote a diary with a sober analysis of what the decades-long future holds for Israel/Palestine. But, of course, a denial of sobriety and long-range thinking is the very essence of what we see coming from Israel and it's even more extremist American "supporters," as witnessed in a demonstration this weekend in New York, that Max Blumenthal reported on. This morning he was on Democracy Now!, with footage of a video he took at the demonstration, which included, for example:
MAX BLUMENTHAL: So how many civilian casualties would it take before you questioned the attack?
ISRAEL SUPPORTER 3: There is not a number involved.
ISRAEL SUPPORTER 4: Nothing good is going to come out of it, unless they keep fighting all the way with this 'til they wipe them all out.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Wipe them all out?
ISRAEL SUPPORTER 4: Yeah, they got to go strong with this.
ISRAEL SUPPORTER 5: There's only one way to deal with a cancer. You burn it out or you remove it. And when people don't want to talk and just want to destroy you and not allow you to live, there's only one thing you can do.
ISRAEL SUPPORTER 2: They are forcing us to kill their children to defend our children.
This is, quite simply, mass hysteria. And it is being feed on lies, half-truths and relentless propaganda. Missing entirely from this account is the fact that it was Israel who broke the cease fire in early November, that Israel had blockaded Gaza throughout the cease-fire period, directly violating not only the terms of the cease-fire, but international law as well.
These were members of a crowd that was being addressed by Senator Schumer and Governor Patterson, both of whom cheerfully fanned the flames of ignorance and hate.
The math here is simple: every innocent child you kill produces a minimum of 100 new hardline rejectionist "terrorists". A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate reached a similar conclusion about the "success" of our fighting the "war on terror" in Iraq: It was a great recruiting campaign for the jihadists.
No wonder killing them all is the only "logical" alternative.
"It was 10pm on Monday, 4 January when my father and four brothers were sitting in the yard of this house," said Ali, 27, son of Jihad Abu Jbarah who was killed along with two other sons. "They were burning a wood fire to warm up and make tea. This is the cup my father was drinking tea from."
Last Monday, Israeli warplanes hit the Abu Jbarah family home, killing three family members and wounding two others including one severely. . . .
"My brother Khaled was carrying his daughter towards her bed as the weather was getting cold and as soon as he turned his back the rockets hit the house," Ali recalled. "His daughter was about to sleep as he fell down to the ground after he sustained two shrapnel into his back." . . .
Basel, 30, Usama, 21 and their 53-year-old paralyzed father, Jihad, were all killed as the missiles dismembered them, scattering body parts in different directions.
"My father went to paradise," says Jihad, Basel's young son, as he stands near the wood stove that his father, uncle and grandfather had been sitting around when they were killed.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: The Palestinian death toll of Israel's Gaza offensive has reached at least 947, two thirds of whom are civilians, an official in the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the strip said Tuesday.
Mo'aweya Hassanein [Health Ministry chief of emergency services] said that of the 947 killed, 635 were civilian men, women and children. Another 165 were Hamas policemen while the remaining 147 were gunmen in Hamas' armed wing and other militant factions.
The numbers could not be independently verified. Israel puts the number of militants killed at at least 400. . . .
Reuters: The Palestinian death toll in the offensive since December 27 reached 937, Palestinian medics say. The Health Minister of the Hamas-run government says close to 400 of those are women and children.
Israel's death toll since the offensive began is 10 soldiers, while three civilians were killed in rocket and mortar fire from the Gaza Strip.
Wounded baby, outside Shifah Hospital in Gaza, Jan. 11, 2009
Reuters: The Palestinian death toll in the 17-day-old Israeli offensive reached 908, more than a third of them children, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said. Thirteen Israelis have been killed -- 10 soldiers, and three civilians killed by Hamas rocket fire.
AP: The army announced Sunday that it was sending reserve units into Gaza to assist thousands of ground forces already in the territory. The use of reserves is a strong signal that Israel is planning to move the offensive, which Gaza officials say has killed some 910 Palestinians, into a new, more punishing phase.
LA Times: 1 dead, dozens injured in Gaza by suspected white phosphorus munitions
By Richard Boudreaux and Yasser Ahmad
January 12, 2009
Reporting from Jerusalem and Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip -- Palestinian villagers said the shelling came from the direction of the Israeli border, less than a mile away, scattering flaming objects in their midst and burning down 20 homes and the local United Nations-run school.
"One landed in my kitchen and caused a fire," said Zohair Mohammed abu Rejila, 35. "I went to put it out, but another one landed on Mayar, my baby daughter. It was like a block of fire, a piece of plastic on fire. When I knocked it off her, it exploded and out came this heavy white smoke with a very bad smell."
Doctors who treated Abu Rejila, his family and dozens of neighbors in southern Gaza said they were apparent victims of white phosphorus fired from Israeli artillery. One woman was killed. . . .
Yousef abu Rish, director of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, said 55 people from nearby Khoza were treated for burns, breathing difficulties, and throat and eye irritation after exposure to toxic white smoke from shells fired just after midnight Sunday.
The Israeli propaganda blitz around their attack on Gaza has been greeted with uncharacteristic skepticism by the American public and even by some of the mainstream US press. Even the Jewish American community is uneasy about this one, in a way perhaps unparalelled since the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon and siege of Beirut. Jews for Peace in Los Angeles are actively protesting the Gaza atrocities, and newspaper articles from around the US on local protests held this weekend often mention mixed Arab-American and Jewish-American rallies.
If it is true that Americans are greeting Israeli talking points with more criticism this time, is it because we have been intensively exposed for the past 8 years to precisely this sort of mental manipulation by Bush-Cheney and their stable of Neoconservatives?
Let's take some of the basic techniques of propaganda practiced by Bush and compare them to those deployed by the Israeli leadership in the past 8 days.
Well, of course, Jaun had no difficulty at all drawing parallels between the neocon propaganda and what's going on now in Israel vis-a-vis Gaza. But the important point is rather the flip side: not that an expert critic can see all these connections, but that even a wannabee dittohead can't avoid them. They can just feel their unspoken 5-0, 40-love advantage slipping away. The fate awaiting them all is that of Martin Indyk in the Democracy Now!interchange with Norman Finklestein that I wrote about earlier this week.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Because, you see, I've got a little secret to share with you all: Empires Fall.
Reuters: A total of 846 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis --- three civilians killed by rocket fire and 10 soldiers --- have been killed since the offensive began on Dec. 27.
Al Jazeera: The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 854 and more than 3,350 injured as the Israeli offensive entered its third week.
CNN: More than 800 Palestinians have been killed in the attacks, including 235 children, and about 3,300 people have been wounded, according to Palestinian medical sources. Thirteen Israelis, including 10 soldiers, have died since the operation began.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera: "We have been to many war zones, but the special thing is that the 1.5 million Gaza population are completely locked in.
"The civilian population has no way to hide. The population density is so high you can not do attacks like this without knowing that you are attacking the civilians.
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