May the 'force' be with them - or not
[A new Israeli friend suggested that I pass along the report below my comment.
Needless to say when rockets are dropping indiscriminately on 1/4 of one's country, it is hard not to join in a military response. The problems for Israel are several:
1) The head of its military happens to be air force and presumably has put too much faith in it as a military counter weapon. We have all learned that bombs and rockets sent from on high do not discriminate between military and civilian targets. Thus, they a priori lend themselves to committing war crimes against innocent persons whether well intended or not.
2) Israel has been heavy handed with the Palestinian population over which it exercises military control. Injustices done are bound to generate resentments and Israel does not have clean hands so far as its occupation is concerned. IMHO it should have worked with the duly elected Hamas government to steer it away from terrorist tactics towards legitimate negotiations. It was with this hope that I initiated the Israel/Palestine List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
3) Those not showing support for the war are presumably Israeli non-Jews, thus, further and, perhaps, dangerously dividing Israel on the home front. Personally I am dubious about religious states. They tend towards bigotry in times of stress. We have this problem with our own Christian wannabe warriors in the U.S. Needless to say Israel's nut case settlers are an extremely dangerous front for generating hostilities and one has the sense of an Israel these days also dividing by poverty and wealth as is the U.S. Such divisions will only further exacerbate internal tensions.
4) It does not look to me as though Israel has won any support for its counter attack on Hezbollah from any but Bush -- and he is on vacation now plucking sage brush in Crawford. I am extremely dubious about any resolving plan emerging with an international force replacing Israeli troops in Lebanon -- Bush made it clear before he departed that Americans would not be included. Were I the sane head of any government I would respectfully say 'no thanks'. I gather that Malaysia is willing to provide? Lotsaluck, guys.
One wishes all the peoples of the Middle East well. But we do them no good by stifling obvious criticisms when they get things wrong.
Ed Kent]
................................
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746268.html
Pen Ultimate / May the 'force' be with them - or not
By Michael Handelzalts
Hassan Nasrallah may be putting up quite a fight against the mighty Israel Defense Forces, but he should know that his days are numbered. The staunchest stalwarts of the Israeli left - those who were against the first war in Lebanon and in favor of a full withdrawal from both that country and Gaza - are coming around. The playwright Yehoshua Sobol (Yedioth Ahronoth, July 27) and the poet Ilan Sheinfeld (in an e-mail to his contact list, with a request to pass it on) have declared a full-scale war on Hezbollah. To paraphrase Menachem Begin's comment during the first Lebanon war: "Nasrallah beware! Sobol and Sheinfeld are after you!"
Both Sobol and Sheinfeld stress the fact that they were the first to oppose the previous Lebanon War - as if they were Coriolanus, forced to show his wounds in order to be appointed consul. How frail human memory is: The first war was waged by Israel precisely for the same reasons as the second one - the shelling of Israel's northern cities. It was only when that first war turned out to be a facade for more grandiose plans to "change" Lebanon without notifying the Israeli government, and after certain ugly things happened and we hung around there for 18 years - only then did we realize that things had gone awry.
The same is true now: It is a given that a "proportionate response" to the initial Hezbollah kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers could have been only kidnapping two Hezbollah fighters and killing eight others, and it is also a given that firing on Israeli civilians with rockets is unacceptable. And yet, creating a "humanitarian disaster" in Lebanon makes this war less than just. And that was the case even before the Qana disaster.
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Not for Sobol. He expected the Lebanese to let bygones be bygones once we had withdrawn from their country, and thought that the Palestinians would start rebuilding Gaza once we were out of there. When they didn't act according to his expectations (possibly because they bear some sort of grudge for things we did there), he began to have second, profound thoughts. He thinks this war is not only just, but a "must," and chastises those from the left who oppose it. He also thinks that Israelis insist too often on quick solutions to crises and believes that is "infantile" - barely noticing that he exhibited the same trait in harboring illusions before that he now regrets.
Barbaric poetry
Sheinfeld - who says he was one of the first to write poems against the first war in Lebanon - paraphrases a poem by Haim Nahman Bialik, who cheered on the pioneers who were building the foundations of the Jewish state-to-be. His version of the poem is addressed to the soldiers fighting in Lebanon, and is one of the most bloodthirsty, barbaric texts I have ever read. A quote or two (in my translation, which does not convey the brutally raw hatred of the original) should suffice:
"Demolish not only the roof, but the foundations as well, you have come far indeed, your toil has not been in vain / Storm on Lebanon and Gaza, and plow it and sow it with salt, raze it down, let no human being remain / Turn them into a desert, rubble, a valley of mess, unpopulated / As we did want peace, we did yearn for peace, and our own houses we had desecrated ... Save your nation and drop bombs / On villages and cities, their collapsing houses do shell / Kill them, shed their blood, turn their lives into living hell / Till they will never try again to destroy us, until we will hear mountains explode / Bulldozed by your heels, and their wails and shrieks, and their graves corrode."
This poem goes on in the same vein, and I quote from it only in the hope that those lines will haunt the poet whenever he writes something else.
There is a Jewish saying that people who are truly righteous cannot share the same space that is occupied by those who recant their heretical views. The reason for this probably is that the stench would be unbearable. Sheinfeld asks his readers to spare him the righteous words; Sobol thinks those of the left who do not share his view are stupid, and that they give the left a bad name. Poor Israeli left. After it lost Eyal Megged some years ago, it seems now it will have to close up shop soon.
If I follow Sobol and Sheinfeld and other representatives of the self-defined "new Israeli sanity" movement, it seems that we are reverting to the age-old adage that declares, "The Arabs understand only force."
This reminds me of a play by Slawomir Mrozek, in which a servant is sent by his master to retrieve something from a crowd of demonstrators, at all cost. When he comes back empty-handed, the master asks him, "Did you use force?" And he answers, pointing to his wounds: "I did. They did not understand."
Which makes me wonder: Maybe "force" is the only language the Arabs do not understand? We speak various dialects of force around here, and yet they don't get it. Maybe we should try some other language, like Arabic?
Meanwhile, during this war-with-no-name (although President Bush had one for it, a great one, "this shit"), I am reminded of the story about a soccer game between a team of elephants and a team of mice. At halftime, when the scoreboard showed a tie, the coach of the elephants (that's us, according to Sobol & Co.) gathers his team and instructs them: "Guys, tactics are of no use here. Now kick ass!"
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
Needless to say when rockets are dropping indiscriminately on 1/4 of one's country, it is hard not to join in a military response. The problems for Israel are several:
1) The head of its military happens to be air force and presumably has put too much faith in it as a military counter weapon. We have all learned that bombs and rockets sent from on high do not discriminate between military and civilian targets. Thus, they a priori lend themselves to committing war crimes against innocent persons whether well intended or not.
2) Israel has been heavy handed with the Palestinian population over which it exercises military control. Injustices done are bound to generate resentments and Israel does not have clean hands so far as its occupation is concerned. IMHO it should have worked with the duly elected Hamas government to steer it away from terrorist tactics towards legitimate negotiations. It was with this hope that I initiated the Israel/Palestine List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
3) Those not showing support for the war are presumably Israeli non-Jews, thus, further and, perhaps, dangerously dividing Israel on the home front. Personally I am dubious about religious states. They tend towards bigotry in times of stress. We have this problem with our own Christian wannabe warriors in the U.S. Needless to say Israel's nut case settlers are an extremely dangerous front for generating hostilities and one has the sense of an Israel these days also dividing by poverty and wealth as is the U.S. Such divisions will only further exacerbate internal tensions.
4) It does not look to me as though Israel has won any support for its counter attack on Hezbollah from any but Bush -- and he is on vacation now plucking sage brush in Crawford. I am extremely dubious about any resolving plan emerging with an international force replacing Israeli troops in Lebanon -- Bush made it clear before he departed that Americans would not be included. Were I the sane head of any government I would respectfully say 'no thanks'. I gather that Malaysia is willing to provide? Lotsaluck, guys.
One wishes all the peoples of the Middle East well. But we do them no good by stifling obvious criticisms when they get things wrong.
Ed Kent]
................................
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746268.html
Pen Ultimate / May the 'force' be with them - or not
By Michael Handelzalts
Hassan Nasrallah may be putting up quite a fight against the mighty Israel Defense Forces, but he should know that his days are numbered. The staunchest stalwarts of the Israeli left - those who were against the first war in Lebanon and in favor of a full withdrawal from both that country and Gaza - are coming around. The playwright Yehoshua Sobol (Yedioth Ahronoth, July 27) and the poet Ilan Sheinfeld (in an e-mail to his contact list, with a request to pass it on) have declared a full-scale war on Hezbollah. To paraphrase Menachem Begin's comment during the first Lebanon war: "Nasrallah beware! Sobol and Sheinfeld are after you!"
Both Sobol and Sheinfeld stress the fact that they were the first to oppose the previous Lebanon War - as if they were Coriolanus, forced to show his wounds in order to be appointed consul. How frail human memory is: The first war was waged by Israel precisely for the same reasons as the second one - the shelling of Israel's northern cities. It was only when that first war turned out to be a facade for more grandiose plans to "change" Lebanon without notifying the Israeli government, and after certain ugly things happened and we hung around there for 18 years - only then did we realize that things had gone awry.
The same is true now: It is a given that a "proportionate response" to the initial Hezbollah kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers could have been only kidnapping two Hezbollah fighters and killing eight others, and it is also a given that firing on Israeli civilians with rockets is unacceptable. And yet, creating a "humanitarian disaster" in Lebanon makes this war less than just. And that was the case even before the Qana disaster.
Advertisement
Not for Sobol. He expected the Lebanese to let bygones be bygones once we had withdrawn from their country, and thought that the Palestinians would start rebuilding Gaza once we were out of there. When they didn't act according to his expectations (possibly because they bear some sort of grudge for things we did there), he began to have second, profound thoughts. He thinks this war is not only just, but a "must," and chastises those from the left who oppose it. He also thinks that Israelis insist too often on quick solutions to crises and believes that is "infantile" - barely noticing that he exhibited the same trait in harboring illusions before that he now regrets.
Barbaric poetry
Sheinfeld - who says he was one of the first to write poems against the first war in Lebanon - paraphrases a poem by Haim Nahman Bialik, who cheered on the pioneers who were building the foundations of the Jewish state-to-be. His version of the poem is addressed to the soldiers fighting in Lebanon, and is one of the most bloodthirsty, barbaric texts I have ever read. A quote or two (in my translation, which does not convey the brutally raw hatred of the original) should suffice:
"Demolish not only the roof, but the foundations as well, you have come far indeed, your toil has not been in vain / Storm on Lebanon and Gaza, and plow it and sow it with salt, raze it down, let no human being remain / Turn them into a desert, rubble, a valley of mess, unpopulated / As we did want peace, we did yearn for peace, and our own houses we had desecrated ... Save your nation and drop bombs / On villages and cities, their collapsing houses do shell / Kill them, shed their blood, turn their lives into living hell / Till they will never try again to destroy us, until we will hear mountains explode / Bulldozed by your heels, and their wails and shrieks, and their graves corrode."
This poem goes on in the same vein, and I quote from it only in the hope that those lines will haunt the poet whenever he writes something else.
There is a Jewish saying that people who are truly righteous cannot share the same space that is occupied by those who recant their heretical views. The reason for this probably is that the stench would be unbearable. Sheinfeld asks his readers to spare him the righteous words; Sobol thinks those of the left who do not share his view are stupid, and that they give the left a bad name. Poor Israeli left. After it lost Eyal Megged some years ago, it seems now it will have to close up shop soon.
If I follow Sobol and Sheinfeld and other representatives of the self-defined "new Israeli sanity" movement, it seems that we are reverting to the age-old adage that declares, "The Arabs understand only force."
This reminds me of a play by Slawomir Mrozek, in which a servant is sent by his master to retrieve something from a crowd of demonstrators, at all cost. When he comes back empty-handed, the master asks him, "Did you use force?" And he answers, pointing to his wounds: "I did. They did not understand."
Which makes me wonder: Maybe "force" is the only language the Arabs do not understand? We speak various dialects of force around here, and yet they don't get it. Maybe we should try some other language, like Arabic?
Meanwhile, during this war-with-no-name (although President Bush had one for it, a great one, "this shit"), I am reminded of the story about a soccer game between a team of elephants and a team of mice. At halftime, when the scoreboard showed a tie, the coach of the elephants (that's us, according to Sobol & Co.) gathers his team and instructs them: "Guys, tactics are of no use here. Now kick ass!"
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 8:35 AM
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